The Light House – Saturday September 3rd – 8.30pm
Tickets £5.80 / £4.40 concessions – For Bookings call 01902 716055 – http://light-house.co.uk/
Heavy Metal Parking Lot
This video documentary short documents Heavy Metal fans taligating in the car park outside the since demolished Capital Centre in Landover, Marylan, on May 31st 1986, before a Judas Priest Gig.
By the early 1990s, the film had become a cult classic, being traded on VHS tapes across the globe and favourited by bands such as Nirvana who reportedly often played it on their tour bus. Due to the films growing demand, nusic rights issues were finally sorted with Judas Priest so that in 2006, an offical 20th Anniverary DVD was realesed.
Less Than Jake and American Hi-Fi parodied Heavy Metal Parking Lot in their music videos for the songs “All My Best Friends are Metalheads” and “Flavor of the Weak“. The Backstreet Boys also lampooned it in their music video for “Just Want You To Know“. Film distributor Cowboy Pictures gave it a limited 35mm theatrical release in 2003, paired with Chris Smith’s documentary Home Movie. Lady GaGa‘s original partner and DJ Lady Starlight has created a homage to Heavy Metal Parking Lot with her series of YouTube videos, Lady GaGa’s Pop Culture Parking Lot, documenting fans outside venues on the pop stars 2009 Fame Ball Tour.
In BEd with chris needham
“The plot: Chris Needham, a 17 year-old Thrash Metal fan from Loughbrough who has been absolutely lacerated by the puberty stick, is about to play his first gig with his band, Manslaughter. The problem is, they’re complete rammel. Between their first painful attempts to stand musically upright and their debut gig, Chris takes the time to defend Metal and Youth, unleashes torrents of adolescent venom upon the Green movement, ‘old bastards’, vegetarians, ‘Chart Music’, organised religion, teachers, and Neighbours, conducts a relationship with his girlfriend in excruciating silence, gets hassled by Mr Taggart and His Amazing Shirt, and goes fishing.”
– Al Needham, Leftlion
During the twenty years since it was made for the BBC’s Video Diaries strand, In Bed With Chris Needham has become a cult artefact; not just for its wealth of quotable lines, but because it plugs you straight into the sensation of being a teenager at battle with the world. It’s also a window on life before social media, a reminder that TV producers once handed out cameras to young people without treating them as performing monkeys, and a testament to the power of metal. Unscreened for two decades – excepting youtube bootlegs.
