Years ago I was on the road with my brother. I think we were in L.A.. We stopped at a convenience store and were walking by the magazine rack. There were a couple feather haired teen-aged girls flipping through heavy metal rock magazines and one of them said "Ohh, Jake E. Lee, he's so fine! I'd fuck him in a second!" (Lee was Ozzy Osborne's guitarist at the time.) We waited until we left the store before we started laughing. It was total teenage innocence and we did not want to break the spell. Rock star adulation is a culture I haven't participated in since pre-punk rock days. When the hair metal thing was going strong in the late eighties I was too busy listening to weird post-punk shit and other non-metal stuff.
That incident and more came to mind today when I heard Apollo 440's "Stadium Parking Lot". The first lines, after a Beastie Boys type riff intro: "Gonna make enough noise to wake the dead, It's going on in my head! Back from the land that time forgot, there's a party in the stadium parking lot!" That reminded me of a film, Heavy Metal Parking Lot (which in turn made me think of Jake E. Lee's future wife). Heavy Metal Parking Lot is a short decidedly low budget documentary. A guy takes a video camera around to different tailgate groups in a stadium parking lot to interview partiers waiting for Judas Priest to take the stage. It's hilarious. Young kids ready to party down and rock out. Definitely back from the land that time forgot.
When I first saw it, it was on VHS tape, swapped, copied, passed around, copied again, etc. It was before DVDs existed and before YouTube existed. The only way you could see it was if someone you knew had a copy, someone who had been included in the chain of copiers. I was fortunate. I had a friend named Max who seemed to have all of the tapes that no one else had. (Max was also the person to hep me to the Monks via VHS, before their LP was reissued.) So "Heavy Metal Parking Lot was one of the first things I tried to find when YouTube started. It was there very early and has been there ever since.
That incident and more came to mind today when I heard Apollo 440's "Stadium Parking Lot". The first lines, after a Beastie Boys type riff intro: "Gonna make enough noise to wake the dead, It's going on in my head! Back from the land that time forgot, there's a party in the stadium parking lot!" That reminded me of a film, Heavy Metal Parking Lot (which in turn made me think of Jake E. Lee's future wife). Heavy Metal Parking Lot is a short decidedly low budget documentary. A guy takes a video camera around to different tailgate groups in a stadium parking lot to interview partiers waiting for Judas Priest to take the stage. It's hilarious. Young kids ready to party down and rock out. Definitely back from the land that time forgot.
When I first saw it, it was on VHS tape, swapped, copied, passed around, copied again, etc. It was before DVDs existed and before YouTube existed. The only way you could see it was if someone you knew had a copy, someone who had been included in the chain of copiers. I was fortunate. I had a friend named Max who seemed to have all of the tapes that no one else had. (Max was also the person to hep me to the Monks via VHS, before their LP was reissued.) So "Heavy Metal Parking Lot was one of the first things I tried to find when YouTube started. It was there very early and has been there ever since.
There have been all sorts of offshoots by the same guys. One is Neil Diamond parking lot and the tailgaters in that one are mainly middle aged women, some bringing daughters or captive husbands. It's endearing from an innocent fan adulation standpoint. There's also a "Where are they now" round up of the original heavy metal parking lotters. This shit is not me, this sort of pre-show tune up and getting too giddy for your own good. But I sure do dig watching it.
~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~
Listen:Apollo Four Forty - Stadium Parking Lot (streaming) at YouTube
Watch:
Neil Diamond Parking Lot (1997) at YouTube
1986 Heavy Metal Parking Lot Alumni: Where Are They Now? (2006) at YouTube
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