Netflix Pick: Why 'We Are Twisted F***ing Sister!' Is The 'Rocky' Of Rock Docs!

Much like you can sit a gaggle of rowdy toddlers down with a Sponge Bob cartoon and immediately have their full attention, sit me in front of a music documentary and my legs lose the ability to move until the credits roll.

I don't even have to be particularly fond of the band, either. In fact, sometimes, the band doesn't matter nearly as much as the story itself. Thing is, not every band's story is worth telling.

This writer's mistake was in thinking that Twisted Sister's documentary, "We Are Twisted F***ing Sister!", fell into that category.

Month after month, I'd seen the flick listed among the many music documentaries on Netflix and month after month I'd managed to hesitate, burp, and choose "Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage", "Hired Gun" or Season One of "Man Down" instead.

Though I'm not quite sure what led me to pick today of all days to hit "PLAY", I'm glad I did because, for a couple hours, I got sucked into a parallel musical universe, where nothing made sense.

On the surface, "We Are Twisted F***ing Sister!" sticks to the tried-and-true documentary format by mixing classic live footage with candid interviews with band members, managers, and record company executives. What this one has in spades is a good story.

Imagine "Rocky", but with Balboa in full make-up and dressed in his mom's clothes, beating the ever-loving shit out of Apollo Creed.

As for the band's national heyday when "We're Not Gonna Take It" and "I Wanna Rock" were all over MTV, amazingly, this documentary covers exactly none of that period.

Wait, what?

While many of use are quite familiar with the band's hi-jinx while at their commercial peak, so few of us are aware of how the band got there and that story is one for the '80s Time Capsule. 

Like Rocky Balboa, Twisted Sister were beloved by their hometown fans, but viewed as an oddity by NYC hipsters and the biz. They could have gone on for another few years being top dog in their respective club scene before hair metal flooded the market and made what they were doing commonplace.

That is kind of what ended up happening anyway, except instead of falling from the top of the suburban Long Island music scene, they fell from the top of the world.

Before they did, though, they became an indelible part of the pop culture in the '80s and beyond, which, love 'em or hate 'em, is quite the accomplishment.

What this documentary does, much to my initial chagrin, is completely ignore their successful major label period and downfall.

What truly sets this documentary apart from any other is that it only covers Twisted Sister's uphill fight to get signed by a major label, yet it is crammed full of the same heart-wrenching ups and downs that most signed bands experience over the course of their entire careers.

In other words, a band that is primary known for one song and video ("We're Not Gonna Take It!") made an entire documentary that simply excluded that part of their career and, to their credit, wound up telling a much more interesting story.

All of this raises a very important issue that I have always had with major label A&R dickheads.

There were a dozen or so major labels within spitting distance of Long Island that found it much more glamorous jetting to London or Melbourne to see some "here today, gone later today" buzz band than to simply take proper notice of a band so big in their backyard that major label bands like Zebra (signed to Atlantic) were opening for them and had thousands of kids going full gonzo.

All they'd had to do was finance an album, hammer the band's hometown market with a full-scale media blitz (no need for a costly national campaign), and watch the album ship platinum.

Use that momentum and word-of-mouth to get them on "The Tonight Show" or some other national institution aimed squarely at Joe & Maggie Sixpack and let the rest unfold on its own.

Three minutes of Dee Snider and the boys on national TV in 1980 would have given Tipper Gore a massive coronary and scared the shit out of middle America. The outrage would have been immense, the press coverage intense, all culminating with a multi-night Tom Snyder interview where, again, the parents of America stare in dumbfounded disbelief at Dee Snyder.in the most frightening drag get-up you've ever seen.

Sure, they looked like semi-pro football players in drag, but, as I recall, so did the New York Dolls.

One band played to 3,000 on any given Friday or Saturday night in Long Island and couldn't get signed for seven years while the other, a critically-acclaimed band located in Manhattan, got signed within a year of forming.

What other bands did we miss because the major label A&R "tastemakers" knew better than to sign a ready-made slam dunk?

Every region between here and Saskatchewan had their own Twisted Sister, too, few of which ever managed to get signed to a major label.

Here in Chicago, we had The Kind, whose "Loved By You" single became a regional Top 40 hit in 1982.

Though not as outlandish as Dee Snider's bunch,  The Kind were carved from the same stone as local rock heroes Off Broadway, who were signed to a major label. Though The Kind were unsigned, they had somebody with money and the good sense to hook up with a regional radio airplay veteran Mike Scheid and, voila, "Loved By You" becomes a regional Top 40 radio hit.

In six months, the band goes from playing poorly attended mid-week club gigs to coveted opening slots for every top act coming through town, and still no major label will touch them.

Around this same time, I bought my first Fools Face album via mail-order from an ad in Trouser Press magazine because a music geek like me could tell they weren't signed, but that they weren't going to let that stop them from being rock stars.

When their album arrived, I recognized none of the names or studios where the album was recorded or mastered, yet it looked and sounded as polished and professional as anything with a major label's logo attached on it.

My first roommate in Chicago came from St. Louis and spoke reverently of "The Face" , who confirmed my suspicions that the band was pulling in crowds comparable to those of the Pretenders, Elvis Costello and other major label new wave acts coming through town.
 
Now, if I was running a record company, anybody that works for me would reflexively whip out a contract anytime they see or hear of a local band selling out a 3,000-seat hall in Poughkeepsie.

All it would have taken was for some label with its own pressing, distribution, and propaganda wings to pull the band aside and say, "Hey, we like what you're doing. Wanna trade that license to print money in Long Island for one to print money all over the country?"

What happened instead makes for one fine documentary and I applaud the members of Twisted Sister for telling their story their way.