‘Twas the night of a Twisted Christmas Show, when all through the House of Blues the fans were restless in hopes that Twisted Sister soon would take the stage. As the curtains opened, with a traditional version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” playing in the air, the band apperared in their classic make-up and garb to bring good cheer to all for a night of metal music.
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Twisted Sister
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 Entertainment
 Art
House of Blues
Chicago, Ill.
December 7, 2006
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Well except for lead singer Dee Snider who had a Santa Costume over his and began passing out gifts of condoms from his little bag of goodies. From there they launched into their own arrangement of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” which is the first track off of “A Twisted Christmas;” the band’s supposedly final album.
In between songs, Dee said: “Hey Chicago, you ready to kick some ass? We’re Twisted Fucking Sister!” then broke into “Shoot ‘Em Down” off of Under The Blade and “Stay Hungry.” “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” found a variation in the last lyrics to “I saw Mommy blowing Santa Claus last night.” A stage filled with smoke and Red & Yellow flashing lights set the ambiance for “The Fire Still Burns” from Come Out And Play with “You Can’t Stop Rock ‘N’ Roll” to follow and at this time guitarist Jay Jay French mentions how he could tell it is Christmas time and how cute the stage looked. In fact it was decorated with white Christmas lights around the amps and red ones around the drums. Along with tinsel on the vocal mic stands, there was also a Santa hat on one bass drum mic and an elf hat on the other. The banner on the back of the stage was exactly like their A Twisted Christmas’ album cover.
Introducing “White Christmas,” Snider jokingly said: “It is up to us to fuck it up!” The energetic fans were singing the words to “The Price” off Stay Hungry before Dee could even spit them out; it was almost like he was singing along. There was a huge uproar to the sound of the cowbell as the crowd thought they were going to hear “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” but it was actually “Oh Come All Ye Faithful.” Not disappointed, they sang along with this one too while clapping their hands and laughed when the end lyrics were changed on this one too from “Christ the Lord” to “Christ was a Jew.”
As it was becoming evident in the scheme of the set list, “Under The Blade” gave way to “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” to “Burn In Hell.” An hour into the show, drummer A.J. Pero played a four minute solo, giving relief to the guitar solos performed by Eddie “Fingers” Ojeda and French who had been trading off on all previous songs. Bassist Mark “The Animal” Mendoza took his turn playing a ferocious solo on “Silver Bells.”
In the last song of the set, Dee announces it by saying when he was seven or eight he decided to test Santa to see if he was for real or not by telling him what he wanted and if he didn’t get it, than Santa wasn’t real. So when he was on Santa’s lap and asking him what he wanted, young Dee Snider replied, “Santa…Santa…I Wanna Rock!” Which crazed everybody and they threw up horns and responded “Rock” to Dee’s “I wanna rock.” At request, the whole audience pumped their fists, screamed rock and jumped up into the air!
The encore started off with “Heavy Metal Christmas (Twelve Days Of Christmas)” that had the band singing to a soundtrack while they held up cue cards of the presents. Sing it with me:
“On my Heavy Metal Christmas my true love gave to me,
12 Silver Crosses
11 Black Mascaras
10 Pairs of Platforms
9 Tattered T-Shirts
8 Pentagrams
7 Leather Jackets
6 Cans of Hairspray
5 Skull Earrings
4 Quarts of Jack
3 Studded Belts
2 Pairs of Spandex Pants
And a Tattoo of Ozzy”
The quote from Saturday Night Live’s comedy sketch about the recording of the song “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult where Christopher Walken is music producer Bruce Dickinson and he says: “I gota fever and the only prescription is more cowbell” precedes the song that everybody was hoping to hear earlier when A.J. played the cowbell; Stay Hungry’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” After that selection was over, Dee took the time to introduce the original members of Twisted Sister and Jay Jay compliments him on writing a set that goes from “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” to “Burn In Hell.” “S.M.F.” was the final song of the night that a lot of people had been screaming for them to play earlier, but didn’t have as big of a response as prior songs. They exited the stage saying: “Thank you” and “We’re Twisted Fucking Sister baby and don’t you forget it!” followed by a revised rendition of “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” called “We Wish You A Twisted Christmas.”
The one hour and forty-five minute set ended around midnight and delivered an amazing show! It was great to see an old 80’s metal style show with tons of guitar solos, three axes standing side by side front and center on stage rocking out and the front man running around all over the place. It was nice to see a band have a venue on its feet rocking without any effort put into it; something that I miss seeing in the more contemporary metal bands.
Before the show, I didn’t know how it would go from Christmas songs to performing their hits, but it was nonstop energy and Twisted Sister jammed the new songs just as hard as their classics and the SMFs rocked out to both equally. After it was all over I thought: “Wow, that was a blast!
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Written by Guest on 2007-10-13 13:15:15
Great article. I love Twisted Sister there fucking awsome.  |
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