Dee Snider - Shut Up And Give Me The Mic - Dee Snider 5/5
Let's go ahead and get the disclaimer out of the way. This will no doubt contain a lot of foul language because this is the memoir of the legendary Dee mother fucking Snider of the one and only Twisted fuckin' Sister. While Kiss may have been my first foray into heavy metal it was without a doubt the boys in Twisted that blew the doors wide open and showed me just how awesome heavy metal was and could be. I was probably eleven when I was at Kenny Kessler's house and he pulled out this tape of a band that I had never heard of. The label of the tape itself was in German (at the time I had no idea that there were such a thing as imports!), and the music was heavy as fuck and no other band at the time looked like these guys. Talk about groundbreaking!
I headed to Big Lots to get my own copy of this amazing record which I paid roughly paid three bucks for and the rest is history. Soon the band was all over the place and Twisted fuckin' Sister was everywhere and then a sadly they were gone. When I got word that Dee's story was out I had to read it. Now that I have I have a better understanding of just what happened to Twisted and just how quickly a band can rise and fall. This isn't your normal run of the mill rock bio and Dee is like the metal version of Father's Knows Best. It's an unusual story to say the least but what else would you expect from Dee fuckin' Snider? The man may seem like a metal madman but he makes it clear that he's a family man that doesn't drink alcohol or do drugs and has actually been a happily married man for thirty five years. Not exactly the stereotypical front man, and you get to see that Dee also has a huge ego.
The one thing that I found interesting was just how honest Snider is. He could easily blame his failures on others but he lays the blame on himself and while most metal and rock bios love to sling a bit of dirt Dee doesn't. You also get the transcript of his testimony of Senate testimony from the PMRC debacle which surprised a lot of people because Dee was just a metal singer. No one expected him to be articulate and intelligent. The book just covers the Twisted years and goes into post Twisted Sister project such as the Bloodied, But Unbowed album from Desperado which was shelved due to the most insane reasons and of course the Widowmaker records. The man never gave up but as the book closes you see that Dee's fifteen minutes of fame were pretty much up or were they?
Shut Up And Give Me The Mic is truly a must read for the SMF's of Twisted fuckin' Sister. This is the story that Dee wrote himself without any help. Not many metal singers actually do that. We all kind of know who Dee is and despite the ego and PMA (Positive Mental Attitude), Dee has written a book that will make you laugh out loud and see exactly why and how Twisted seemed to fade away so quickly. It's also sets up the 2nd coming of Mr. Fucking Snider and hopefully there's a sequel in the works
Let's go ahead and get the disclaimer out of the way. This will no doubt contain a lot of foul language because this is the memoir of the legendary Dee mother fucking Snider of the one and only Twisted fuckin' Sister. While Kiss may have been my first foray into heavy metal it was without a doubt the boys in Twisted that blew the doors wide open and showed me just how awesome heavy metal was and could be. I was probably eleven when I was at Kenny Kessler's house and he pulled out this tape of a band that I had never heard of. The label of the tape itself was in German (at the time I had no idea that there were such a thing as imports!), and the music was heavy as fuck and no other band at the time looked like these guys. Talk about groundbreaking!
I headed to Big Lots to get my own copy of this amazing record which I paid roughly paid three bucks for and the rest is history. Soon the band was all over the place and Twisted fuckin' Sister was everywhere and then a sadly they were gone. When I got word that Dee's story was out I had to read it. Now that I have I have a better understanding of just what happened to Twisted and just how quickly a band can rise and fall. This isn't your normal run of the mill rock bio and Dee is like the metal version of Father's Knows Best. It's an unusual story to say the least but what else would you expect from Dee fuckin' Snider? The man may seem like a metal madman but he makes it clear that he's a family man that doesn't drink alcohol or do drugs and has actually been a happily married man for thirty five years. Not exactly the stereotypical front man, and you get to see that Dee also has a huge ego.
The one thing that I found interesting was just how honest Snider is. He could easily blame his failures on others but he lays the blame on himself and while most metal and rock bios love to sling a bit of dirt Dee doesn't. You also get the transcript of his testimony of Senate testimony from the PMRC debacle which surprised a lot of people because Dee was just a metal singer. No one expected him to be articulate and intelligent. The book just covers the Twisted years and goes into post Twisted Sister project such as the Bloodied, But Unbowed album from Desperado which was shelved due to the most insane reasons and of course the Widowmaker records. The man never gave up but as the book closes you see that Dee's fifteen minutes of fame were pretty much up or were they?
Shut Up And Give Me The Mic is truly a must read for the SMF's of Twisted fuckin' Sister. This is the story that Dee wrote himself without any help. Not many metal singers actually do that. We all kind of know who Dee is and despite the ego and PMA (Positive Mental Attitude), Dee has written a book that will make you laugh out loud and see exactly why and how Twisted seemed to fade away so quickly. It's also sets up the 2nd coming of Mr. Fucking Snider and hopefully there's a sequel in the works
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