Heavy metal music in Potomac

Mention the name Jeff Krulik anywhere around here (Washington DC and environs) and four words generally come to mind: “Heavy Metal Parking Lot.” Made with Jeff Heyn, that quintessential back yard short, which the homegrown filmmakers shot of Judas Priest fans in the parking lot (doh!) of the now deceased Capital Centre in Largo, MD, will mark its 25-birthday next year (and celebrations will occur). But in early May 1985 (a year before the filmmakers shot whacked-out heavy metal fans in that well known Prince Georges County asphalt patch just outside the Washington Beltway), there was a whole lot of carousing going on in a (then) somewhat remote area of Potomac (Montgomery County), MD, a posh northwestern suburb of the nation’s capital. At the time I was living in neighboring Bethesda, maybe 10 minutes from the locale of what was basically a party of high school kids (many from Winston Churchill H.S., where my kids would attend a decade+ later), out getting drunk and high, and hoping for a pleasant, parent-free weekend of music from some area R&B, “Southern Boogey,” rock ‘n’ roll and heavy metal bands. Billed as Full Moon Jamboree, a thousand or so kids gathered in a field, their cars passing close-by mansions, their music often annoying those homes’ disapproving inhabitants. Long before cell phones, iPods (heck Apple’s Macintosh computer was barely a year old), and other present day means of social connectivity, it was invitation by flyer, land-line phone, and other antique word-of-mouth techniques. SOURCE: Film Threat