Twisted Sister
Club Daze Volume II: Live In The Bars (Remaster Series)

June 2012
Released: 2012, Armoury Records
Rating: 3.5/5
Reviewer: JP

There has been a huge amount of activity from the Twisted Sister camp in these past 12 months. Seven reissues, half a dozen DVD’s, and a book! This month I’m going to look at a few more of the Armoury Records Twisted Sister ‘Remaster Series’ reissue campaign, including YOU CAN’T STOP ROCK ‘N’ ROLL, LIVE AT HAMMERSMITH and CLUB DAZE VOLUME II. To top it all off we look at Dee Snider’s autobiography SHUT UP AND GIVE ME THE MIC. Enjoy this twisted blast from the past!



The CLUB DAZE pair of albums were a real treat for Twisted Sister fans when they first came out at the turn of the century. Volume I was mostly pre-record deal, studio rarities and Volume II (Subtitled LIVE IN THE BARS) is just that, an odds and sods collection of live tracks from back in the day. It’s a very nice package with about 20 photos and a great essay by Ben Liemer and an introductory comment from Jay Jay French discussing the source of these recordings. There are thirteen tracks broken into three parts and the whole album will take you back for an hour or so. There are a pair of tracks from the Stay Hungry sessions that never really got fleshed out until the band reunited and finished them off in 2001. Tracks 3-9 were a Halloween show in 1979. The last bunch of tracks are from another radio show that sound a bit rougher but include a couple of old cover tunes in the form of ‘Long Tall Sally’ and ‘Johnny B. Goode’ because back in the days you had to play covers in the bars.



After reading Dee snider’s autobiography and learning how he was a bad money manager (personally, not professionally) a song like ‘Plastic Money’ makes a lot more sense as it speaks to the trap of racking up credit card debt! There are three or four songs that were unique and exclusive to this release giving extra value to the die-hard SMF’s. Although there are no bonus tracks from the original 2002 issue, it’s still great to see these rarities available to the Twisted public.