Saturday, December 6, 2008

Twisted Sister's Twisted Christmas Spectacular!

So in honor of Alison's birthday yesterday, we went and saw Twisted Sister at the Nokia Theater in Times Square for thier 'Twisted Christmas' spectacular, which is a fun sort of metal goofy holiday thing that they've been doing for a few years now.

I'll admit, I wasn't sure about this and I splurged on the VIP tickets for her sake and was a bit skeptical about whether or not this show would deliver or not. Before the show we eat some tasty Indian food and I was also worried that I might poop my pants later in the evening. Thankfully, that didn't happen.

At any rate, we got to the venue and didn't really care about the opening acts so we sat at a table and people watched. I drank some beers and we saw a dude who look a bit like Mark Tolch wearing a Manowar shirt on top of another Manowar shirt. He would periodically switch them throughout the night. I thought that was pretty metal and for once felt out-Manowared. Now I have something to aspire to.

After people watching, we wandered into the auditorium where Eddie Trunk was on stage getting people stoked to see the band. Mick Foley was also wandering around, which was pretty rad. Once Trunk was done, the lights went down and the music started up. Once the curtain went down and the lights came back up, the band came out, one at a time... everyone except Dee. A few seconds later, Mini-Kiss came out carrying Dee on a sled of some sort, he was dressed like Santa.

The stage was pretty rad. It had a machine up top where good Santa dolls would go in and 'metal' Santa dolls would come out. On the left there was a thing that looked like the pod from The Fly and periodically people would pop out of it, but more on that in a bit. The stage hands were all dressed like elves and would throw inflatable balls shaped like Christmas ornaments into the crowd throughout the show.

The Santa suit came off and the band went back and forth between doing heavy metal Christmas tracks and older actual Twisted Sister tracks. Remember that Fly pod I mentioned earlier? Well it opened up and Lita Ford came out dressed in red pleather cat suit thing. I don't know how she fit into it. I was hoping she'd sing a Lita Ford song or two, or maybe bust out a Runaways tune but no. She and Dee did a duet to I'll Be Home For Christmas though, and that was kinda cool. Once Lita was done, Mick Foley came out on stage and asked everyone what they wanted for Christmas. Eddie wanted some wine and a smoke, AJ wanted to be tall, The Animals wanted a twelve car garage, some tools and a tank to drive around NYC, and I forget what Jay Jay French wanted, something about not having to use lipator, which I think is cholesterol medication. Dee wasn't sure what he wanted... he thought about it for a minute, and then, surprising nobody but pleasing everyone, he screamed out, I WANNA ROCK! at which point, they played that song. Which made perfect sense. They finished up and then came out for the expected encore where they did the whole twelve days of Christmas thing before closing with We're Not Gonna Take it, at which point Lita Ford and Mini-Kiss came back out again.

All in all, it was one of the most fun shows I've seen in ages. I had my doubts, but they were definitely put to rest about 2 minutes into the show. These guys may be getting on in years but they still deliver live and Dee's still got amazing energy up on stage. They sounded great, really tight and super heavy and they had the crowd eating it up. What a killer show.

But the night was not over!

After the show, cause we had the fancy VIP tickets, we got to go backstage and do a meet and greet with the band. They were all pretty friendly and Dee made me do one of those 'respect knuckle punch' things when he noticed I had a Warriors t-shirt on. He also wished Alison a happy birthday. We also got rad Christmas cards from the band, that they signed, which was kinda funny. After that Mark Mendoza yelled at everyone and told them to get out of the room, so we went home. Alison fell asleep on the subway. When we got home we drank Snapple and I ate a Twix bar.

















3 comments:

The Hamzinger said...

Wow - that sounds like it was great!

ianjane said...

Way way way better than it had any right to be!

Unknown said...

very cool