Welcome to your weekly soiree into a kaleidoscope of colors and sounds. You've clicked into a blog like no other! It's Tuesday's Musical Notes and we welcome you!!! You have just joined with thousands of others that have an intense love of this combination of rhymes and rhythm we call music! As we look into the iconic and ironic (don't you think) landscape of songs, we discover old friends that have just been waiting for their spin on the turntable or their moment of "just push "Play" to arrive.
This is the place where "One Hit Wonders" intersect with the God of Wonders. This mixed-up bag of musical goodness combines to educate and enlighten us on things we need to know about music, and sometimes ourselves. Once again...welcome. We think you're gonna like it here.
This is the place where "One Hit Wonders" intersect with the God of Wonders. This mixed-up bag of musical goodness combines to educate and enlighten us on things we need to know about music, and sometimes ourselves. Once again...welcome. We think you're gonna like it here.
Musicologists all over the world join us each week here at The Notes as we celebrate the renowned who write the songs that make the whole world sing, as well as the rebellious who shout at the top of their lungs...
"We're Not Gonna Take It" is one of those songs from the 80s that well outlived the band who made it famous. The original lineup of Twisted Sister didn't make it past 1989, despite the success of the singles "We're Not Gonna Take It" (1984, Billboard Hot 100 peak #21), "I Wanna Rock" (1984, Billboard Hot 100 peak #68), and the cover of the 1964 hit by The Shangri-Las, "Leader of the Pack" (1985, Billboard Hot 100 peak #53). These singles were all recorded by the most prominent Twisted Sister line-up of Jay Jay French (guitars, backing vocals), Eddie "Fingers" Ojeda (guitar, backing vocals), Mark "The Animal" Mendoza (bass, backing vocals), A. J. Pero (drums, backing vocals) and Dee Snider (lead vocals, guitar).
The band separated in 1989 but found themselves reforming in 1997. Since this time, Twisted Sister has had 18 different members, has toured with other metal bands of the 80s, released new material (2006's Twisted Christmas being the most recent), and most notably, provided charity activities including November 2001's New York Steel, a benefit concert with Anthrax, Overkill, Sebastian Bach (Skid Row), and Ace Frehley (KISS) that provided $100,000 to NYPD and FDNY Widows and orphans in the wake of the September 11 attacks on New York. Frontman Dee Snider also lobbied for the rights to use "We're Not Gonna Take It" as an acoustic piano ballad in partnership with illusionist Criss Angel's cancer charity HELP (Healing Every Life Possible).
"We're Not Gonna Take It" by Dee Snider to benefit Criss Angel's HELP (Keep a tissue handy)
That kind of proves that there is more than meets the makeup about the band Twisted Sister. Another of those things was that Dee Snider insisted that there be no drugs or alcohol used while Twisted Sister was touring. Here's a recent interview about that topic as well as a few others we found very interesting: "Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider talks band’s breakup, staying sober in the ‘80s: ‘I made people’s lives miserable’" - by Stephanie Nolasco foxnews.com, January 23, 2021
"We're Not Gonna Take It" has been ranked as #47 on the 100 Greatest Songs of the 80s list as well as #21 on VH1s 100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders of the 80s. It remains popular for its use in television shows, commercials, and as recently as 2018 continues to be featured in major theatrical releases (Ready Player One - Warner Bros. Pictures - 2018).
To add to the iconic irony of the song, Snider says that regardless of its "in your face" attitude and rebellious overtones, the characteristics of "We're Not Gonna Take It" were actually inspired by the band Slade and the music was guided by the Christmas carol "O Come, All Ye Faithful" (Oh yeah! Just caught you attempting to singing the carol with today's featured song!!!)
Rock and Roll, especially bands associated with Heavy Metal, is often characterized by its rebellious nature. This is something that is endemic in all humans, not exclusively Metal fans. From the moment the bite of the forbidden fruit was taken, mankind determined to rebel against God. The flip-side of that relationship has always been God attempting to restore the perfection of Eden on the earth through His mercy, love, and grace. Nowhere is that more emblematic than in Numbers 16.
So you've escaped Egyptian slavery, rebelled many times against your Emancipator while traveling to a land that is filled with promise and potential, decided that the battle would be too overwhelming to succeed and now you're gonna question the one person who He talks to directly? This seems hard for us to imagine, but given the motis operandi of this group of folks, we don't find the rebellion by Korah, a guy would have become a priest because he was a part of the tribe of Levi, surprising. In fact, it's almost expected.
Korah decides to ignite a group of his relatives and some leaders from a couple of other tribes in a "You ain't the boss of me, who made you holier than thou?" moment against Moses and Aaron. The requisite "we would have been better off in Egypt" is once again parlayed into the conversation and God is about to have a conniption. Korah seems to be jealous that God had set apart Moses and Aaron as the leaders of the 2+ million folks. His pride and arrogance seem to me to be a foreshadowing of the Pharisees of Jesus' day. But that may just be me... Because of the injustice, perceived by Korah and 250 other "leaders", he begins inciting his tribe and surrounding folks..."We're not gonna take it...no we ain't gonna take it..."
"...Oh be careful little mouths what you say..." The rebels in the group go so far as to deny the fact that God had brought them to the brink of the promised land by saying that Moses broke the promise of leading them to that very land from which they had just come. Again, this seems ridiculous, but revelatory at the same time. Don't we do the same? Doesn't God bring us to the edge of what He has promised and just as His promise is about to be fulfilled we change our minds and decide not to follow? Then we want to blame God for not fulfilling his promise of "prosperity and hope" (Jeremiah 29:11 NASB/AMP/KJV). We are disappointed because we took that Scripture out of context and haven't done our part to achieve either prosperity or hope.
In a ceremony in which only the clean and ordained priests were supposed to participate, Moses instructs Korah and his followers to present incense (a special mixture that only the priests would use) as an offering to God, while Aaron and his sons would do the same. God was to chose who was "holy" between the 2 groups. God chooses Aaron's group and then determines to destroy the nation and start over with Moses and Aaron and their families.
Moses once again intervenes with God (another foreshadowing of what Jesus does for us every day) regarding destroying the entire nation. God relents and determines to punish only those who have been involved in the rebellion...again (Do you see a pattern developing? Thank goodness God is patient!!!) He instructs those who are not involved in the rebellion to get away from the tents and settlements of the ones involved. Then, if we can borrow from Carole King, they felt the earth move under their feet, they saw the sky tumblin' down...(Tuesday's Musical Notes - "I Fell the Earth Move" (Carole King)) In what Moses describes as a "new thing", the earth literally opened up, Korah, his crowd, everything that belonged to them, was swallowed up and the earth closed over them. And...the 250 "leaders" who were holding the incense offering were burned up as apart of the "moving" service. Once again, God shows that He is holy and we are not. But He also shows His mercy in the fact that He didn't destroy the entire nation.
Plagues against the Egyptians, walking on dry land across the Red Sea, provisions of manna and quail, and now the earth swallowing those who would choose to defy God would undoubtedly seem to be enough to provide molding for the Israelites into a holy people, but no. The Bible says the next day they started blaming Moses and Aaron for the deaths of the rebels. Seriously, pattern anyone? Another plague occurred because of the insolence of the Israelites. Moses and Aaron once again intervened, God told them what to do, and the plague stopped, but not before another 14,000+ folks died on top of those the earth had for its main course. God had already promised that this generation of Israelites, other than Joshua and Caleb (the faith-filled spies), would perish in the desert. The Israelites were doing their part to make sure this happened and happened quickly.
There is an enormous deal of parallelism in today's great story from the Bible and our lives. We inherited the rebellious nature, the "we're not gonna take it" attitude from Adam and Eve. Every day of our lives we are faced with decisions that will either honor God or rebel against Him. "We've got the right to choose and there ain't no way we'll lose it..." seems to be our mantra. Even in our rebellion, God loves us. That's worth repeating: "Even in our rebellion, God loves us."
You see friend, what we don't realize is that God is not wanting to shackle us with the "don't's" in the Bible. He is actually waiting to free us from the true enslaver of our lives, our own sin, and rebellion. Past our pride and arrogance awaits a God who wants to make us holy. He wants us to be like we were in the garden, perfect and pure. And He wants to have a relationship with us! The only way to achieve that is to reverse the recipient of our rebel yell (uh no, we won't be doing that Note anytime soon...). Instead of telling God, we must determine to tell ourselves "We're not gonna take it...anymore" and turn to the One who is waiting to provide for us His best...
So how is this accomplished? It already is friend. Jesus' made the way for us to reverse our rebel yell. He provided the blood sacrifice for our perfection and holiness. Jesus then intervenes on our behalf, because regardless of how hard we fight against our pride and arrogance, we will still rebel. Jesus continually asks God to forgive us because of what He (Jesus) did on our behalf. We only have 1 job. Believe. Then and only then are we able to stand with the family of believers, pump our fists in the air, and sing "...We're right, yeah, We're free, yeah, We'll fight, yeah, You'll see, yeah" And thereby proving we're neither worthless nor weak...
'Til Tuesday,
Serving HIM by serving You,
randy
