Twisted Sister
New Haven Agora
New Haven Connecticut
Thanksgiving, 1983
On a brisk Thanksgiving evening, my friends and I trekked to New Haven to see the most famous and notorious underground Tri-State band – Twisted ‘F**kin’ Sister’! With our fake IDs and a dash of hope in our eyes, we had to see the band that our older brothers had raved about for so long. In retrospect, who knew that the band would break in the next few months over in England first, and then subsequently the US.
Twisted had just released “You Can’t Stop Rock N Roll’ and were out touring the usual hot spots to promote its release. The stage was set-up was the simplest, coolest the band had ever employed; a pink barbed wire fence that stretched about the whole back line of the stage. And above the drum riser was the now infamous band logo taken from the band’s first extended play, “Ruff Cutts”.
In a place as intimate as the Agora, the band looked monolithic, especially Dee Snider. As he strode onstage and yelled, ‘We are Twisted F**kin’ Sister’, he was god-like. His long, flowing curls, piercing eyes and elongated body canvassed the stage in a stalking manner while Jay Jay, Eddie, Animal and AJ simply pummeled the packed audience. They always opened with “What you don’t Know’ in that it is the absolute perfect opener. The band, from there, went back and forth between their debut and the aforesaid “You can’t Stop Rock N Roll’. Particularly lethal were “Like a Knife in the back,” “The Kids are Back”, “Shoot’em Down”, and Tear it Loose.” However, the best was the Priest-like stormer, “Under the Blade.” And, of course, Dee’s now infamous rap during the break in The Stones’ “It’s Only Rock N Roll” was hilarious.
The legend that is Twisted Sister will never pale in the Tri-State area, and no other band will ever have the same impact that Twisted did – at least not in this area!