Led Zeppelin gets a ‘whole lotta love’ in new comprehensive trivia-based iPhone app
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Led Zeppelin fans with an insatiable appetite for trivia -- like the location of the photo shoot for the cover of the 1973 disc “Houses of the Holy’ or the number of different LP sleeves that were issued for the group’s 1979 opus “In Through the Out Door” -- can get their Zeppelin fix and more in a new iPhone/iPad app.
“This Day in Led Zeppelin,” released Monday, follows the popular “This Day in Music” app -- which is a companion to the website and book of the same name.
The Zeppelin app boasts an exhaustive 1,000-plus pages worth of tidbits about the band.
“I had the idea of making individual apps for some of the biggest acts in the world, and thought the best one to start with would be Zeppelin, because of their iconic status,” said Neil Cossar of This Day in Music, in a statement about the app.
Cossar’s team spent more than a year researching every Zeppelin gig, studio date, live venue, album and book on the band in order to construct the app, and on top of boasting a detailed list of every show the band played, the app also features a quiz with hundreds of questions and critiques of every Zeppelin song and album. It allows fans to play any Zep track they own in their iTunes library within the app -- or instantly buy any missing track via the iTunes store. The most impressive feature of the app is the comprehensive ‘on this day’ section, which offers 365 days of all things Zeppelin. For fans that can’t wait to see what happened on a date a month from now, or on their birthday, the app allows them to punch in any date of the calendar year. For instance, this week in its history the band appeared at the Wheaton Youth Center during Zeppelin’s first North American Tour in 1969 with some reports suggesting that only 55 fans showed up. In 1975 they played the first of three nights at the Chicago Stadium, the second date of a North American tour; tickets set fans back a whopping $7.50.
“It’s been a mammoth task, but at the same time very rewarding. It’s made me listen to every Led Zeppelin song, watch live performances and contact other Zep fans for their help. One thing I’ve learned from this is that they were undoubtedly one of the finest rock bands (if not the best), we’ve ever seen,” Cossar said. “I was lucky enough to see Zeppelin live at the Hard Rock in Manchester, England, when I was 14. They were absolutely brilliant. I can still see them walking on-stage, plugging in and then hitting us with a wall of sound. I remember being at school the following day, my ears still ringing.”
-- Gerrick D. Kennedy
Twitter.com/GerrickKennedy
