Through the wonders of the interwebs I got to finally hear the live version of Twisted Sister's "Shoot 'Em Down". This is from the Reading Rock Festival in 1982. I first heard this the second time I heard the legendary (in my mind anyway) "Hard Rock Cafe" show (which had NOTHING to do with that lame-ass chain of restaurants) on local radio station KRQR ("The Rrrocker"). The station cleaned up some of the intro and the two hosts Ron & John were joking around about censorship.
Ron: "We had to censor some of this...ah, now John's throwing stuff at me!"
(Ron & John both laugh).
Ron: "OK, here it is live from Reading Rock Volume One, Twisted Sister."
I was pretty blown away by this back in February 1984. This combo of AC/DC riffs (but seemingly louder) and a bit of Nazereth mixed with a New York attitude had me hooked.
Listen here
Sure, there's no question that Twisted Sister became a joke after they became safe, MTV fare. And unlike Umlaut, my small circle of friends & I weren't hanging out with Metallica and Slayer in '83-'84 hell, we hardly knew who they even were. We were dorks from Pleasanton for fox sake! We loved this song along with the attitude it conveyed. It didn't seem to matter to us that they looked like the world's ugliest trannies. They fukkin' rocked and that's all
that mattered.
My other early exposure to Twisted Sister was
this song which was used as an early promo for MTV. No one outside the New York area seemed to know who these guys were but hell, this was damn good heavy metal band. Yeah, let's forget that Dee Snider cranked up the lame after 1984. (And Metallica didn't?!?) The first two Twisted Sister albums "Under The Blade" and "You Can't Stop Rock N' Roll" are in part undeniably metal. While it's not as heavy as Metallica or Exciter but for the time period just as good.
ENDNOTES: KRQRs call letters are now being used by these assclowns in Chico who play Linkin Park but also have a metal show. It's the old but new again Z-Rock Format. WTF?
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