Heavy Meadow
April 5, 2021 5:55 PM Subscribe
Heavy Metal Parking Lot (1986), the infamous classic short underground documentary by Jeff Krulik and John Heyn, has an hour-long prequel! Shot in 1985 in the woods somewhere in Maryland, released in 2010, and free on youtube since August 2020—HEAVY METAL PICNIC! Trailer | Full Documentary | Krulik documentaries previously on MeFi
"Junior's Farm" on the trailer, because the dudes who lived there called it "The Farm", because of course they did. This was notable:
....much of it was recorded using a home video camera and a stolen CBS News microphone swiped from the Reagan Inauguration earlier that year.
posted by thelonius at 6:18 PM on April 5, 2021 [7 favorites]
....much of it was recorded using a home video camera and a stolen CBS News microphone swiped from the Reagan Inauguration earlier that year.
posted by thelonius at 6:18 PM on April 5, 2021 [7 favorites]
Country Barn Network?
posted by wheelieman at 6:54 PM on April 5, 2021
posted by wheelieman at 6:54 PM on April 5, 2021
the internet K-Hole is probably relevant here
posted by philip-random at 9:15 PM on April 5, 2021 [10 favorites]
posted by philip-random at 9:15 PM on April 5, 2021 [10 favorites]
the internet K-Hole is probably relevant here
Oh my, this site is amazing. As a teen in the 80s I kept expecting to see myself or someone I knew as I scrolled through this page. Is this a super popular/famous site? The curation of the banal is fantastic.
So much accidental renaissance!.
posted by jeremias at 3:17 AM on April 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
Oh my, this site is amazing. As a teen in the 80s I kept expecting to see myself or someone I knew as I scrolled through this page. Is this a super popular/famous site? The curation of the banal is fantastic.
So much accidental renaissance!.
posted by jeremias at 3:17 AM on April 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
There's also 2001's "Heavy Metal Basement".
Jeff continues to make feature films and shorts - his most recent are "Led Zeppelin Played Here" (I met him when he was out scouting suburban Maryland community centers for that one) and a documentary about the DC area's own Levittown, Bowie, MD.
Very nice guy who is genuinely obsessed with local music, history and characters.
posted by ryanshepard at 7:17 AM on April 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
Jeff continues to make feature films and shorts - his most recent are "Led Zeppelin Played Here" (I met him when he was out scouting suburban Maryland community centers for that one) and a documentary about the DC area's own Levittown, Bowie, MD.
Very nice guy who is genuinely obsessed with local music, history and characters.
posted by ryanshepard at 7:17 AM on April 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
Metalhead Teens in a Record Store (1989)
posted by philip-random at 7:50 AM on April 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by philip-random at 7:50 AM on April 6, 2021 [1 favorite]
The curation of the banal is fantastic.
So much accidental renaissance!.
I've been thinking about this kind of stuff a lot of late. My educational background included a fair amount of serious art history and related critical thinking which I don't regret. It's served me well enough in terms of grasping the how and why of a lot of what's so messed up about the culture. But with all that imposed critique came an almost wholesale rejection of anything that might be called suburban (ie: the actual ecosystem which had formed me) -- the K-Hole. It could be eviscerated, subverted, ridiculed ... but to admit to actually loving any of it and (worse) arguing that there might some something of tangible cultural value worth exploring -- that just wasn't going to get you anywhere.
And yet, well, I said it already -- that's the ecosystem that made me. To suggest that there was zero value to any of it -- that just doesn't scale.
The standard dismissal of the K-Hole said something along the lines of, whatever "culture" may have been there, there was nothing of aesthetic relevance, everything driven by marketing-advertising-commodification-manipulation, ugliness blah blah blah.
Whereas what we actually had was way a chaos of too much culture, flooding out of televisions mostly, and radios, and the cineplexes, the malls in general. We were drowning in it, couldn't have escaped if we wanted to. But we mostly didn't want to. Because it was all there albeit in impure mutant form. We learned our Moby Dick from Mr. Magoo, our opera from Bugs Bunny and Gilligan's Island, our Shakespeare from every possible angle, even Happy Days. We had more fucking culture in us than any generation yet known to humankind. Also monster and disaster movies, night stalkers, psycho killers, birds gathering on a wire about to attack. Mix it up with marijuana and black market psychedelics and well ...
Maybe I should stop here.
posted by philip-random at 8:16 AM on April 6, 2021 [6 favorites]
So much accidental renaissance!.
I've been thinking about this kind of stuff a lot of late. My educational background included a fair amount of serious art history and related critical thinking which I don't regret. It's served me well enough in terms of grasping the how and why of a lot of what's so messed up about the culture. But with all that imposed critique came an almost wholesale rejection of anything that might be called suburban (ie: the actual ecosystem which had formed me) -- the K-Hole. It could be eviscerated, subverted, ridiculed ... but to admit to actually loving any of it and (worse) arguing that there might some something of tangible cultural value worth exploring -- that just wasn't going to get you anywhere.
And yet, well, I said it already -- that's the ecosystem that made me. To suggest that there was zero value to any of it -- that just doesn't scale.
The standard dismissal of the K-Hole said something along the lines of, whatever "culture" may have been there, there was nothing of aesthetic relevance, everything driven by marketing-advertising-commodification-manipulation, ugliness blah blah blah.
Whereas what we actually had was way a chaos of too much culture, flooding out of televisions mostly, and radios, and the cineplexes, the malls in general. We were drowning in it, couldn't have escaped if we wanted to. But we mostly didn't want to. Because it was all there albeit in impure mutant form. We learned our Moby Dick from Mr. Magoo, our opera from Bugs Bunny and Gilligan's Island, our Shakespeare from every possible angle, even Happy Days. We had more fucking culture in us than any generation yet known to humankind. Also monster and disaster movies, night stalkers, psycho killers, birds gathering on a wire about to attack. Mix it up with marijuana and black market psychedelics and well ...
Maybe I should stop here.
posted by philip-random at 8:16 AM on April 6, 2021 [6 favorites]
and a little K-Hole background, from over five years ago:
5 Years Later, We’re Still Addicted to Internet K-Hole
posted by philip-random at 8:20 AM on April 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
5 Years Later, We’re Still Addicted to Internet K-Hole
posted by philip-random at 8:20 AM on April 6, 2021 [2 favorites]
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posted by wheelieman at 6:09 PM on April 5, 2021 [2 favorites]