We Are Twisted Fucking Sister!

We Are Twisted Fucking Sister!

By: Erreh Svaia

A couple of days ago I watched on Netflix the documentary "We Are Twisted Fucking Sister!", it was for me an amazing trip back to the early 80s, when I was just a little kid of close to ten years old, even at that early age music was an important thing for me, I borrowed lots of Lps from my uncles' collection and I listened constantly to The Beatles, Credence Clearwater Revival, Grand Funk Railroad and Bette Midler soundtrack for The Rose.. And of course lots of Kenny Rogers, which my father loved.

Music was never a game to me, it was a fantasy world, a way to escape the monotonous reality, my cousins' house just across the street had a big keyboard, it was enormous and had to many buttons, I didn't knew why it was there, nobody knew how to play it, they had lots of money, I guess they spent it really in unwisely ways, I was certainly the only interested in that big old thing abandoned at their home, also there was a satellite dish, something really unusual at houses in the early 80s,but again my cousins were really spoiled rich kids, but that was an advantage to me, I had the chance, thanks to them to watch music videos for the first time in my life, it was Quiet Riot, Def Leppard and Twisted Sister, of course, TS made the biggest impact on our innocent minds, the makeup, the colorful outfits, the big hair and We're Not Gonna Take It, of course that was a little rebel kid like me dream come true, so I asked my parents for the record, it was Stay Hungry, a big Lp with Dee Snider on the cover holding a big bone, my parents were shocked, but they were also amused by my strange tastes, I guess the fact that they didn't were familiar with English made it easier, lyrics didn't upset them, and I was just going through my first English classes, so they though it was OK for me to listen to English spoken music.

I can't remember if Stay Hungry or Quiet Riot's Metal Health were my first owned records, I never gave my uncles their records back, so I don't really know, but my fascination with Twisted Sister was really big, they had all this outrageous comic videos, it was pure anarchy for a kid's mind, I can't say Twisted Sister made me love music, but it made me have my own tastes in music, outrageous, out of step with the musical tastes of other kids, but it was really a rock n roll baptism.

Latter I learned that TS were a big New York underground band, records label hated them just the way they hated the New York Dolls, Kiss made it in Detroit, they wouldn't have made it in New York, critics hated New York band since the times of the Fugs and the Velvet Underground, and TS suffered for that, without a record label they were able to gather 22,000 souls on a free concert in Long Island, they were really big in the New York club circuit and even crossed the Atlantic Ocean to conquer England, introduced to the British rockers by none other than the late great Lemmy Kilmister, before finally signing with Atlantic Records, who hated them from the beginning, but recognized the potential of the outrageous band.

Watching the documentary made me really nostalgic, it remind me of my days as a kid, a little lonely days, as both of my parents worked, and music became my big companion along conics, first and then books, another thing to recognize is the persistence of the band, decided to conquer the world despite an apparent conspiracy of bad luck against them, the band finally got signed and made it big, the hype was so big, that they weren't able never again to cope with it, but they showed the way for a lot of band, and in a way were able to bring back a little shock to rock n roll, and convince a lot of little kids like me, that rock was our one true religion.