Music

Website chronicles every t-shirt in cult documentary 'Heavy Metal Parking Lot'

by Jeremy Mersereau

Back in the early, pre-Web 2.0 days, anyone who took the time to create their own site through the magic of web hosting OGs like Angelfire or Tripod were usually some flavour of pop culture obsessive… after all, who else but Weezer or Green Day megafans would have the patience to work with rudimentary HTML, dial-up modems, and “Under Construction” animated GIFs?

Early web denizen Craig Giffen’s personal site, 12xu.com, is a case study. It’s in much the same state as it was when it was first created in the Roaring ’90s, albeit with a few more  aquariums made from old Mac photos and Pacific Crest Trail planning programs. In case the site address and downloadable voice clip of Chuck D. didn’t tip you off, Craig’s also quite the music aficionado, a fact that only truly hits home when you realize he’s chronicled every single t-shirt that appears in the 1986 cult documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot.

On this page of his site, t-shirts and their wearers are grouped in sections by band, with Judas Priest obviously taking the lion’s share (18) of the logos, what with it being the parking lot for their concert. In the #2 slot isn’t a band at all, interestingly: it’s Harley-Davidson, with a statistically significant 12 shirts. Hope you were paying attention to your demo, motorcycle marketing guys of the ’80s! Dokken, who was opening the show, comes in third, with 8 shirts. Sadly not counted: the legions of the shirtless, which probably would beat out (and up) any other group.

Giffen also includes a section for unidentified shirts, so anyone with an encyclopedic knowledge of ’80s metal ephemera should take a quick look and see if they can help pinpoint the origin of any of the 47 remaining mysteries. Note: they didn’t have 4k video in 1986, so you’re gonna need an electric eye to decipher what any of these mulleted heroes are wearing. Still, give it a shot: it’ll take a hell of a lot less of time than painstakingly HTML-coding still frames from a documentary onto your website in 1996.

[h/t Metal Sucks]