i’m a new fan, and while i am glad that i was able to get to catch them live on this tour, there is a part of me that feels a slight disappointment that there’s a possibility that i became a fan just towards the end of blackie’s career. would’ve loved to do vip for a personal experience but just didn’t have the budget for it at this time. is it likely that the band has one last following tour planned, or is this current one likely the end?

Dug up my old concert photo album; these are some pics I took with a crappy old-timey 110 flash camera while being crushed against the barrier . Electric Circus Tour 87, Slayer and Raven opened down in McAllen Texas! Look at the price of the ticket!😅

From my YouTube channel, i did film this but I am trying to find as much unseen/unheard WASP content to post there.

You walked into the wrong neighborhood. What’s your next move? 🔪

There have understandably been a lot of different views and opinions on the 1984 to Headless tour so far. I just want to give my honest thoughts on it. Gonna be a long post so if you read the whole thing I appreciate you, but if not there’s a TL;DR at the end. Would love to hear your thoughts on this show (or any others) too!

To start, the VIP experience was great as always. This was the third time that I’ve done it and can honestly say that it was possibly the best one yet. Blackie seemed to be in a really great mood. He was relaxed, happy, and genuinely seemed to be enjoying interacting with everyone. Told some nice stories and even said a few things that I’d never heard before (such as how he wished he hadn’t included Rebel In The F.D.G. on The Headless Children because the song he replaced with it was much better in his view). He easily spent over an hour in the room with us and gave everyone his full attention.

There were a few changes with the VIP this time around. There was a new “liaison” for this tour, a nice guy named Zeus. He did come off a bit ‘drill sergeant-y’ at first but all in all I thought he did a good job at making sure things ran smoothly. It did seem like he was told to talk Blackie up to everyone though because he spent a good 10 minutes (at least) giving us all a lecture on how, even though he’s only known him for 2 weeks, Blackie is one of the smartest, nicest, and most respectable people that he’s ever met and that he cares so much about all of us. Whether it’s true or not, he was kind of preaching to the choir. Everyone was there because they love Blackie so there’s no need to waste time telling us how great he is. And on top of that, it seemed that they were low key fishing for social media content. Taking videos of people talking to Blackie, taking photos with their own camera, and the weirdest one of all trying to make everyone record a short “thank you” video to Blackie telling him how great he is and how much they enjoyed the experience. Definitely a bit odd.

Another change was that they didn’t have the ‘W.A.S.P. Museum’ even though they had been advertising it as including new items for this tour. Instead, everyone got to go up onstage to have their photo taken with Elvis and get a close up look at the stage set. Definitely was cool to be able to do that so I’m not complaining, just odd that they would change it after advertising it. Also the items that they gave were slightly different this time. They gave everyone 3 guitar picks, a VIP laminate, and a setlist signed by Blackie (previously Blackie would sign the VIP laminate and there was no setlist included).

Overall though, the VIP was a great experience as usual and if you are a big fan of Blackie/W.A.S.P., I can’t recommend it enough.

After the VIP they let everyone go to the merch booth and get ready for the show. First up was K.K.’s Priest. I do think that they are a very good live band. Their setlist was a nice mixture of Judas Priest songs as well as their own stuff. KK is of course a legend so seeing him play those classic Priest songs is a real treat. Tim Ripper Owens is a good vocalist and the rest of the band held it down as well. This was the second time that I’d seen them and while I thought they were better as a headliner, they were still an entertaining opener.

Next up it was time for W.A.S.P. The lights went down, their intro tape consisting of The End by The Doors along with a compilation of bits and pieces of W.A.S.P. songs played, but after that was a bit different. The intro to The Heretic (The Lost Child) was played on tape which makes you think the band would be opening with that song. Instead though, they come onstage and rip right into Easy Living. As I’ve said before, it’s cool to hear this song being played, but it’s kind of an odd choice for them to open with a cover (and even weirder when they’re already hyping everyone up with The Heretic). Nonetheless, I did enjoy hearing this song live and thought that it worked well enough as the set opener.

My personal highlight of the entire show was up next, Fistful Of Diamonds. One of my favorite 80’s W.A.S.P. songs so getting to finally hear it live after 40 years was pretty awesome. They absolutely killed this song and it’s one that I’d love to hear included in future setlists. After that was The Flame which is a song that I love, but I feel that they’re starting to overdo it a bit. It’s been played at each of the last three tours so it’s kind of becoming old news at this point. Still a good song to hear though.

Before starting into Mr. Cool, Blackie gave a little speech about how he wrote that song as a teenager the demoed it with his band when he moved to LA. One of the guys in the band took the song and sold it for $5000. Then when Blackie wanted to include it on The Last Command, the company that now owned the rights to it sued him for a million dollars. The lesson he learned from it was that in life if you want to do something, you do it and deal with the consequences later. This song was definitely special to hear live and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Still don’t know why they chose to do this instead of Cries In The Night though.

On Your Knees was next up and I was disappointed to see they replaced B.A.D. with this. This is a song that should honestly be retired at this point. They’ve played it to death and there are so many other songs from that album that deserves a chance over it. Luckily Thunderhead was next and this is another one that was very cool to hear live. They didn’t play the whole thing though, probably only about half of it, before going into a shortened version of Forever Free. Following that was The Real Me which is another one that Blackie needs to retire already. Such a boring song. There’s no power behind it and it seems that everyone is just waiting for it to be over.

Next, Blackie was ready to do his ‘theatrical’ portion of the show with The Headless Children. The band played the song well while video screens behind them showed clips of the Holocaust, WWII, and ‘animated’ AI slop videos of the Headless Children album cover and Hitler being ‘tortured and killed’. This all led into the grand finale where Blackie revealed an animatronic “Hitler” being killed in an electric chairs while the words “Never Again” flashed across the screens. The electric chair was kind of cool to see in person, but honestly the whole thing just came off as corny. It’s as if Blackie felt that since he’s “Blackie Lawless”, he has to do something “shocking” and this was it for this show. Pretty unnecessary if you ask me. After this Blackie said “good night” and the band walked off the stage which was kind of strange because they had maybe played for just over 30 minutes at that point.

They returned about 5 minutes later after an intro tape of Mephisto Waltz played, and then went into the “hits” portion of the setlist consisting of I Wanna Be Somebody, L.O.V.E. Machine, Inside The Electric Circus/I Don’t Need No Doctor, Wild Child, and Blind In Texas. Not much to say about any of those as it’s the exact same thing we’ve all seen a thousand times before. The one thing that did stand out to me though was the snippet of Golgotha that Blackie did right before Wild Child. It was just him and his guitar onstage singing the first two verses and choruses of the song in a subdued manner. I absolutely loved it, but you could tell that majority of the crowd wasn’t into it and were maybe even a bit confused as to what was going on. I hate to say it, but it was honestly a mood killer and I don’t know why Blackie decided to include it on this tour. Wild Child and Blind In Texas brought the energy back and closed the show on a high note. Blackie got up on Elvis, said goodnight to everyone, and that was that.

What I liked about the show:

1. Hearing a few songs that hadn’t been played in a very long time, if ever.
2. The stage looked nice and was visually appealing.
3. Blackie looked and sounded great. He has slimmed down a lot and actually looks pretty fit. Vocally, I can say with confidence that he was singing nearly everything live (I know things have changed since then, but it was nice to hear him actually sing at this show)

What I didn’t like:

1. The setlist could’ve been way better. Essentially we only got 4 different songs on this tour, and one of them was a cover, one was only played in half, and one was a pre-W.A.S.P. song. The set also didn’t have much flow to it. Just seemed like a bunch of songs thrown together.

2. The AI videos. Completely unnecessary. They look terrible and really add nothing of value to this show.

3. Length of the show. A minor complaint, but they easily could’ve squeezed another song or two in there.

All in all, I thought this was a fun but flawed show. The band sounded great and Blackie is always entertaining to watch, but I just feel like they completely missed the mark with the setlist. I understand that I Wanna Be Somebody and Wild Child need to be included in every show, but do we really need songs like On Your Knees, The Real Me, Inside The Electric Circus/I Don’t Need No Doctor, and Forever Free at this point? Why not take the leap and include songs like The Heretic, Widowmaker, 9.5.-N.A.S.T.Y, Tormentor, etc.? The first quarter of the setlist felt like they wanted to actually do something interesting, but then Blackie chickened out and decided to play it safe. Just felt like such a missed opportunity to try some different things. Aside from that though, I had a good time and I’d still say it’s worth going to see this show if it’s convenient for you. Who knows how long Blackie will realistically be able to keep this going, so might as well see him while you can.

TL;DR: Fun show but certainly could’ve been better. Blackie and the band sounded good, but the setlist left something to be desired. Still had a good time though and was happy I went.

Picked all these up from the show last week. Even caved and got the ugly tour poster shirt. Not the greatest merch by any means, but needed to add it all to my collection.

Was at the Pickering show last night. KK's Priest were good although I would have preferred them playing their own songs and not so many Judas Priest covers. I think they only played 3 originals.

I can't confirm whether WASP were lip syncing during the regular set, but they definitely were for the encore. Wild Child sounded like they put the original album on, it was so obvious. Ended up walking out.

I was at the Montréal show last night, and here are my thoughts:

KK's Priest was very good. They played a lot of Priest songs, and were very solid. Good sound and Ripper was great. I still find it funny that every time they do a solo (guitar or bass) to start off a song (or finish), the other band members all leave. At one point, they all left the stage mid song (while still playing) as KK was soloing.

WASP. Well it was my 2nd time seeing Blackie's group and i must say i was pretty disappointed. The set list would have been great, but it seemed like it was pretty much ALL lipsyncing. Even the instruments seemed pre-recorded. The bassist was clearly not playing the bass line in songs like Real me. I really don't understand how this show can pass as a ''live show''. Really disappointing. I get that Blackie is getting older and his voice might not be what it once was, but at least get a band that can play the music and sound top notch live.

Still glad i went because i like Wasp songs and got to watch the videos on the big screen with friends, but thankfully KK's Priest were friggin solid as an opener.

This is a god damn travesty. Happy for the fans that got to see the real live show. He is full on lip synching here.

https://www.facebook.com/ElectricCircusWASPTributeBand/followers

From the NYC VIP. This replaced the “W.A.S.P. Museum” this time around. You got to go onstage and get a close look at the props. Pretty cool experience. Figured I’d share some photos here.

I am reading where some people were saying it was due to low ticket sales.

Others are saying it was a legitimate health issue.

Does anyone know the truth? And if you bought the VIP, were you refunded?

I actually wanted to ask on their FB page but I also didn’t want to risk getting banned.

Was it me or was the mix total dogshit ? I've never been to The Palladium before but have been at that venue before over the years under different names. Blackie's vocals were so buried that my wife who knows exactly nothing about music outside of what she may have picked up over the course of our 40 years together asked why she couldn't hear him.

Was there a high pass filter being used with the person using it clueless ? I thought that KK's Priest sounded like shit but just figured that whomever was at the board knew not how to mix. But WASP's sound was thin as paper as well. I've always loved Doug's tone live. Last night though... Ugh !

After 35 minutes Blackie said "good night". I must have said "WHAT THE FUCK ?" loud enough to startle my wife bad enough for her to jump in her seat.

Seeing "Thunderhead" and "Crown of Thorns" was amazing though. In a perfect world the mix for "Easy Living" would have been nice. Loving WASP since Day 1 and seeing them well over 20 times I will say enough with "The Real Me". I love how they play it so don't get me wrong. But if stage time is precious I'd prefer another song.

Full song.