Out on the edge with Dee Snider

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List this: Dee Snider's listeners come up with `edgier' Top 10 rockers
By WAYNE PARRY
Associated Press Writer
He's not gonna take it.
Dee Snider, Twisted Sister frontman and five-nights-a-week deejay on Philadelphia radio station WMMR-FM, was less than impressed when he heard what listeners of a British radio station decided were the Top 10 rock songs of all time.
The poll by British station Planet Rock got worldwide media coverage.
"It was getting picked up all over the world as gospel," said Snider, who's known almost as much for his onstage profanity as for his music. "I said, `What are we, wood? Why should we have to sit here and be subjected to some arbitrary ... list out of England?" (You can guess what the ellipses were.) "Let's subject them to my arbitrary ... list."
So he did. WMMR conducted an online poll for several months, and came up with a list long on Metallica and AC/DC, with classic rock and grunge mixed in. "It's a little harder, a little edgier," Snider said.
The Dee Snider list:
1. "Stairway To Heaven" Led Zeppelin
2. "Back In Black" AC/DC
3. "One" Metallica
4. "Freebird" Lynyrd Skynyrd
5. "Sweet Child Of Mine" Guns 'N' Roses
6. "Enter Sandman" Metallica
7. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" Nirvana
8. "For Those About To Rock" AC/DC
9. "Bohemian Rhapsody" Queen
10. "Gimme Shelter" The Rolling Stones
The Planet Rock List:
1. "Stairway To Heaven" Led Zeppelin
2. "Freebird" Lynyrd Skynyrd
3. "Bohemian Rhapsody" Queen
4. "Smoke On The Water" Deep Purple
5. "Paranoid" Black Sabbath
6. "Whole Lotta Love" Led Zeppelin
7. "Hotel California" The Eagles
8. "Rock And Roll" Led Zeppelin
9. "Highway To Hell" AC/DC
10. "All Along The Watchtower" Jimi Hendrix
For the record, no Twisted Sister songs cracked the WMMR top 10, although "We're Not Gonna Take It" and "I Wanna Rock" came in at numbers 21 and 22 respectively.
"The fix is in. I'm on the radio every night," Snider said with a laugh. "I wasn't pushing it, but, you know..."

― briania (briania), Saturday, 12 February 2005 05:34 (twenty-one years ago)

"It's a little harder, a little edgier," Snider said.

"Hotel California"? "Freebird"?

Do give me a break.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Saturday, 12 February 2005 05:36 (twenty-one years ago)

At least the Planet Rock list has "Paranoid" on it!

― Pangolino again, Saturday, 12 February 2005 05:40 (twenty-one years ago)

The Eagles were on the other list, you do realize, Alex? Not Dee's.
Nevertheless, both lists are pathetic.

― Mr Deeds (Mr Deeds), Saturday, 12 February 2005 07:14 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh wait, I read it as one list. Sorry, Mr.Deeds. In any case, the Eagles shouldn't be on ANY list apart from a "Most Dire and Needlessly Overplayed!"

And you're right, both lists are depressingly pathetic. Evidently there hasn't been a rock song worth listening to since 1991. What a crock.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Saturday, 12 February 2005 07:20 (twenty-one years ago)

Ha ha, he took out Sabbath and Hendrix and his list is "harder", "edgier"?

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Saturday, 12 February 2005 07:31 (twenty-one years ago)

"What are we, wood?"
wtf?

― weath'D, Saturday, 12 February 2005 07:38 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, the fact that Dee and his station conducted a whole new online poll "for several months" and wound up with essentially the same sorry list is beyond comical.
"We're not gonna take it!" screamed Dee.
Classic.

― Mr Deeds (Mr Deeds), Saturday, 12 February 2005 07:46 (twenty-one years ago)

These lists are both so generic that you're basically playing the top 10% of the songs played on classic rock radio in the CT/MA/RI radio weekly playlists. Yet honestly, both are decent enough. If I really had to think about the top 10 rock songs of all time, I'd probably have a similar list, just because those songs are all so recognizable.
My top ten most recognizable classic rock songs, in any order:

1) AC/DC - Back in Black
2) Metallica - Enter Sandman
3) Black Sabbath - Paranoid
4) Deep Purple - Smoke on the Watter
5) Lynyrd Skynyrd - Freebird
6) The Rolling Stones - Satisfaction
7) Led Zeppelin - Stairway to Heaven
8) KISS - Rock and Roll All Nigh
9) Guns N Roses - Sweet Child Of Mine
10) Derek and the Dominoes - Layla

These are all songs based on the catchy riffs each produced, and what I'd call a pretty obvious list of songs anyone should immediately recognized.

― Bryan Moore (Bryan Moore), Saturday, 12 February 2005 09:50 (twenty-one years ago)

If I had to make a list of 10 songs aired regularly that I absolutely NEVER flip away from when I hear them on the classic rock stations around here.

1) Ted Nugent - Stranglehold (Good GOD is this song still catchy after years of listening to it)
2) T-Rex - Get it On (Bang a Gong)
3) Neil Young - Hey Hey, My My
4) Bad Company - Bad Company
5) The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter
6) Eric Clapton - Layla
7) Black Sabbath - War Pigs
8) AC/DC - Back in Black
9) The Rolling Stones - Its Only Rock and Roll
10) Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb

I certainly like MANY songs more than these, but there are few others that are in the regular 102.1, 99.1, or 105.9 (In CT) rotation that I enjoy as much.

― Bryan Moore (Bryan Moore), Saturday, 12 February 2005 09:58 (twenty-one years ago)

And while I'm on, if I was going to do my top 10 songs of artists who get their songs (not necessarily these ones) played on classic rock radio...

1) T-Rex - Bang a Gong
2) Rolling Stones - Rocks Off
3) Rolling Stones - Loving Cup
4) Black Sabbath - Planet Caravan
5) Neil Young - Cortez the Killer
6) Neil Young - Motorcycle Mama
7) Talking Heads - Born Under Punches
8) Rolling Stones - Sweet Virginia
9) Rolling Stones - Dead Flowers
10) Neil Young - Powderfinger

I'm fully aware thats 5 artists, but I think more of those songs than any other classic rockers...

― Bryan Moore (Bryan Moore), Saturday, 12 February 2005 10:14 (twenty-one years ago)

My "Wood" Ten, in the order they occurred to me:

10. "Would?" Alice in Chains
9. "Nearly Lost You" Screaming Trees
8. "Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree" Tony Orlando & Dawn
7. "Wooden Ships" Crosby, Stills & Nash
6. "Woodstock" Joni Mitchell
5. "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" The Beatles
4. "Knock on Wood" David Bowie
3. "Big Log" Robert Plant
2. "Feed the Tree" Belly
1. "Rainy Days and Mondays" The Carpenters

― weath'D, Saturday, 12 February 2005 10:48 (twenty-one years ago)

Dee's cameo in the Klaus Nomi film is a thing of wonder.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Saturday, 12 February 2005 14:48 (twenty-one years ago)

Dee's cameo in the Klaus Nomi film is a thing of wonder.

!!!

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Saturday, 12 February 2005 16:25 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, that decidedly tips it over into the "must see" category now!

― briania (briania), Saturday, 12 February 2005 17:00 (twenty-one years ago)

It's not Dee, though. That's the disappointing thing. Cause he's listed in the credits. It's some other guy in the band. And, sadly, it's not Mark "The Animal" Mendoza, either.

― Come Back to Me Again and Play Your Sad Guitarthur (Arthur), Saturday, 12 February 2005 17:10 (twenty-one years ago)

the Eagles shouldn't be on ANY list apart from a "Most Dire and Needlessly Overplayed!"

Next time I hear Take It Easy on the radio, oh god...I think I'm just going to jump out the window. We're on the 4th floor, by the way.

John Peel's answer to the question of whether he would play the Eagles: "not bloody likely"

And Stairway To Heaven, for Jesus H. Christ's sake. Zeppelin have another squidrillion songs in their catalogue to choose from. And "Rock And Roll" doesn't count either. Of all possible worlds, there is no need for such stasis. If I'd gone by what I heard on the radio, I'd never have gotten into Zep at all.

Dee Snider in a Klaus Nomi film. Ha ha. Now that is something. But you say it's not Dee at all? I'm almost disappointed.

― Bimble... (Bimble...), Sunday, 13 February 2005 06:27 (twenty-one years ago)

Dee was great in Sex & The City

― buck van smack (Buck Van Smack), Sunday, 13 February 2005 06:52 (twenty-one years ago)

Also on the Chappelle Show.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Sunday, 13 February 2005 07:41 (twenty-one years ago)

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