A week after fronting TWISTED SISTER for the first time, Sebastian Bach played his second show with them — and this one made room for two songs from his old band.
The gig was Friday, September 4 at the Alaska State Fair in Palmer, Alaska, with the new touring lineup of Bach on vocals, founding guitarists Jay Jay French and Eddie Ojeda, Russell Pzütto on bass and Joey Cassata on drums. The seventeen-song set, per Setlist.fm, leaned hard on the early material: "What You Don't Know (Sure Can Hurt You)", "You Can't Stop Rock 'N' Roll", "We're Gonna Make It", "Shoot 'Em Down", "Tear It Loose", "Destroyer", "The Kids Are Back", "Like A Knife In The Back", "Ride To Live, Live To Ride", "Under The Blade", "The Beast", "Burn In Hell" and "The Price".
Then came "I Remember You". Two songs later, after "I Wanna Rock", came "Youth Gone Wild", before "We're Not Gonna Take It" closed the night. Both are SKID ROW songs, and Bach had said in advance that he had no intention of retiring them.
"I'll never stop singing the [classic SKID ROW] songs '18 And Life', 'I Remember You', 'Youth Gone Wild', 'Monkey Business', 'Slave To The Grind' — I'll never stop doing that," he told WRIF's Meltdown in March. "So I'm not stopping my solo band. I'm continuing my solo band, but I'm doing shows with TWISTED SISTER that are bigger than my solo band."
The rest of that interview read as a fan's résumé. "I'm probably a bigger fan of TWISTED SISTER than anybody watching this… I don't just like the hits. I like 'Like A Knife In The Back'. I like the heavy TWISTED SISTER." He pointed at the club-era band as the model for what he intends to bring: "When they were a club band, they would come out there like a punk rock band or a total thrash metal band."
Dee Snider stepped away this year over health problems — arthritis, knees gone bone on bone, doctors telling him to stop jumping around — and gave Bach his blessing in a phone call both men described as tearful. French, for his part, treats the change as ordinary band arithmetic.
"In the 53-year history of the band, we've had 20 people who've been in and out of TWISTED SISTER. We've had five singers, we've had three bass players, we've had four guitar players and we've had nine drummers. Half of them are dead," he said on SiriusXM's "Trunk Nation". "The music always survives. They said Steve Perry could never have been replaced in JOURNEY. And he was. That Freddie Mercury could never be replaced. And he was. And guess what? Baz is gonna be an unbelievable replacement."
Pzütto, a longtime bass tech for the band who has also played in Snider's solo projects, has taken over from Mark "The Animal" Mendoza. Cassata — who drummed on Ace Frehley's "10,000 Volts" — is covering for Joe Franco, who could not make the fall dates.
Ten more shows follow this autumn, beginning on Sunday, September 6 at the L.B. Day Amphitheater at the Oregon State Fair in Salem.