Merriweather’s M3 Festival highlights local hair bands (Video)

WASHINGTON – This weekend’s M3 Rock Festival at, Merriweather Post Pavilion, one of the most affordable festivals of the season, will transport fans back to a time when hair bands ruled the music world.

Scheduled for Friday and Saturday, May 3 and May 4, M3 will capture the culture of hairspray, leather, and garish makeup that so many bands in the ’80s and early ’90s embraced.

Friday’s lineup kicks off with Maryland-based Bad Seed Rising. None of the group’s members is over the age of 14, but they’ve already shared the stage with the likes of Everclear and Motley Crue.

After recording at Dave Grohl’s studio and performing for music industry executives in New York, the band was signed to a contract with Roadrunner/Atlantic Records.

The local connection continues on Friday with a performance by KIX, a band that was originally formed in Hagerstown, Md.

KIX was known as one of the area’s top cover bands before inking a record deal with Atlantic records in 1981. The band’s hits included the power-ballad, “Don’t Close Your Eyes” and “Blow My Fuse.” The video for the latter showed the band performing in the long-gone Baltimore club, Hammerjacks.

Friday’s lineup finishes hard and heavy with W.A.S.P.

The band was one of the named targets of the Parents Music Resource Center, whose now-infamous 1980s U.S. Senate hearings called for borderline censorship of “potentially offensive content.”

The festival’s schedule for Saturday is headlined by Bret Michaels — former front man of Poison — and Twisted Sister.

The rest of Saturday’s festival schedule includes:

  • Jackyl
  • Firehouse
  • Steel Panther
  • Kings X
  • Great White
  • Loudness
  • JSRG
  • Love/Hate
  • Steelheart
  • Tuff
  • Trixter
  • Streetlight Circus
  • Korupt
  • In the Pink

Tickets for Friday are $25 to $40. Tickets for Saturday are $40 to $60.

Watch “I Won’t Be the One” by Bad Seed Rising:

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