Metal's roots may have come from the late '60s and '70s, but it can be argued that the genre's real coming out party happened May 29, 1983 at the US Festival in San Bernardino, Calif. The music weekend offered a wide array of musical options, with each day catered to a specific sound, but it was the Heavy Metal Day on May 29, 1983, that showed just how popular that metal had become.
Boy were we excited when we saw a "cat-eating festival" because we thought it was a euphemism for "eating at the 'y'"! We shocked to learn this was about really eating cats, not "yodeling in the valley"!