News Segment

DEE SNIDER PERFORMS AT PENNSYLVANIA HIGH SCHOOL:

April 22, 2005

HAMBURG, Pa. – A school auditorium crowd roared as senior Greg Miller Jr.’s five-piece band let loose with “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” and Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider, who wrote the 1984 hit, bounded onstage to perform it with them.

Snider agreed to go to the Hamburg Area High School talent show in rural eastern Pennsylvania after he heard administrators planned to bar student rock bands from performing, fearing injuries from slam dancing.

Snider, now a disc jockey on Philadelphia rock station WMMR-FM, ranted on the air about the controversy, and Miller got more than 200 students to sign a petition against the amplified music ban. School officials changed their minds, which Snider called “very cool.”

Students said no dangerous dancing was expected. Snider, who agreed “a high school auditorium is no place for moshing,” helped arrange for a security company to work the Thursday night show. Video reporters from MTV and VH1 found their way to the school, and TV satellite trucks were set up in the parking lot.

Snider danced around the stage with the band and about 20 other students who had performed earlier. More than an hour after the show, he was still signing autographs and posing for pictures.

“Whether they go on to be musicians or not, they have learned a lesson, a lesson about growing up in a small town, and that big things can come out of quiet, out-of-the way areas,” he said.

Courtesy of www.ap.org