WASP - Live in Santiago de Compostela

This time WASP came near where I live (1 hour by car) and if it wasn’t because we got 2 tickets for the concert thanks to one TV program, for sure we wouldn’t go. 28 € was too expensive for looking one band that didn’t do anything good since the very beginning of the 90’s. And even.. heavy metal is not my favourite style… but ok, I used to like first albums of WASP, mostly the excelent “The Headless Children”, the last good one (in 1989!!).

So they came making a tour of their too overestimated “The Crimson Idol” (1992). Yeh, already 15 years ago! I didn’t know that album was so known or so well appreciatted. For me (and I could bet) for a lot of metal fans more and WASP fans this is a quite boring album. Not so good as for remembering it, doing one tour with the whole composition of 1992. It was really surprising, and if they choose an album for making one whole worldtouring, I would prefer they took one of the previous ones, and not only me, I guess.

I swear I tried to listen again the previous day of the concert “The Crimson Idol”, but I got sooo tired that I passed by most of the songs before they finished.

But this album they choose have one particular reason for its election, I think, more than the own compositive or musical quality of itself. It’s a conceptual story. WASP tried to do their particular “Operation: Mindcrime”, but ridiculous far from the Queensrÿche’ masterpiece. So WASP decided to take part in this new wave of arising of 80’s bands and like Queensrÿche are doing, remembering their masterpiece in one epic concert few months ago about “Operation: Mindcrime Part I and II”.

In fact, thinking a bit about that, “The Crimson Idol” is a trying of copy of “Operation:Mindcrime” (not at the same level, of course). WASP tried to show a more serious and mature way of composing, making at the same time one story, their own conceptual album. But under my sight it failed.

Well, starting with the concert, it was said that WASP would have one guest band, Talesien (Power metal from Coruña (Galicia)), not a bad band. But they refuse to play with WASP due to the extremely hard conditions the US band gave to them: playing 25 minutes, no access to the backstage, no chance of having mixing table, they had to bring their own one (the sound would be horrible, I guess), no benefits for Talesien and the manager should pay 100 € to WASP for having one guest and 200 € to the place they were about to play. I would do the same as Talesien did. These are not conditions for doing one show, but we all know the "stars" and their weird conditions. They had lots to lose and few to win. And of course WASP (or Blackie Lawless) gave a sh.. about them. In fact members of Talesien were just at our left, and their faces watching the show wasn’t very happy ones. They almost didn’t applauded at all.

By the way, lots of people, really lots!! Something completely surprising for me. I really thought that 28 € for one almost buried band, and knowing the few participation of metal fans here in Spain, mostly in Galicia for concerts… we would be almost alone there. This is showing the spanish culture about music and especially metal. They are living 20 years ago. The only important are old bands of the 80’s and few spanish ones. It doesn’t matter that the 80’s bands are almost finished since lots of years ago, or that the spanish ones are copying what the rest of Europe did 5 years ago (well, this in the best of cases, the rest they are copying what 80’s bands were doing). The panorama in Spain about music culture is quite deppresing, and in metal is quite desperating also.

The show of the american band was based on The Crimson Idol album, as I said, and they played the whole album, from the beginning to the end, meanwhile they played one movie in one big screen just behind them. The movie was corresponding to the album song by song, making the soundtrack of all those compilation of videos. I have to say that the story is quite a nonsense, at the same or less level of the composition of the album. Nothing compared at all with “Operation: Mindcrime” with wich we found some terrible similarities some times in some scenes and their way of making it.

All seemed to be too milimetrically prepared, too sampled, too artificial. All the choirs were sampled and the keyboards as well… this is not bad itself.. but sometimes when they sang the refrains it wasn’t believable that the bass and the other guitar were singing those 80’ Hair Metal choirs. Even the voice of Blackie Lawless was dubbed behind. Yeh! I mean there was another Blackie Lawless singing at the same time. I really think those weren’t echo effects.
They were too static and boring, with no interaction at all with the mass. And the sound … ough!! As always here.. bad sound!!! Really bad for a so reputated band with a lot of concerts behind. My ears are still suffering it 2 days after.

The public was like almost in all the concerts I have been here in Galicia. I mean, almost not-participative at all, just in few refrains, and just some few really young ones that were moshing for some seconds (maybe drunk) during the reproduction of “The Crimson Idol”. They should learn something about the way of living concerts of estonians, ¡¡and they have a lot more than us!!(so I guess we should give all to the few ones we have, shouldn’t we?).

The album and the movie finished, and it was a bit long for us (my brother and me)… it seemed that the long long last song of the album never finished. And here we (or I) thought, ok, like the guests didn’t play, and WASP will play the most known songs, now THE CONCERT BEGINS! Blackie told: “We’ll be back soon”, those were all the words he told the public since they jumped into the scenary…

So WASP came quite soon, after some very shy screams “Wasp! Wasp! Wasp!...” they started again with “L.O.V.E. Machine” and the ambient changed a bit with more interaction, the tall Blackie Lawless running in the scenary and the bassist also moving a bit more, doing some funny 80’s heavy metal movements. The public was also a bit more active, and this last part of the concert was more funny and entertaining than the previous.”Wild Child”, “Blind in Texas”, one song of their current album of this year, Dominator, that I didn’t know, -cause WASP almost left existing since 1989 for me, and all the new things they did are quite unimportant- and the last one, “I Wanna Be Somebody”. That was the bad point: 5 songs!! They could choose between a lot!! They didn’t touch their (for me the best) album “The Headless Children”! No “Mean Man”, “The Real Me”,”The Heretic”, “The Neutron Bomb”, ” Rebel in the F.D.G.”, “Tormentor”, “Animal”, “The Torture Never Stops”, “Hellion” and I could go on and on and on… Just 5 songs weren’t enough for telling it was a worth concert. And it was quite clear that they wouldn’t do a second Bis. I had the sensation at the end that they didn’t put too much will and they didn’t mind too much this concert.

I didn’t go too convinced to that concert but now I could say that I wouldn’t pay that huge quantity of 28 € (450 EEK more or less :P) for watching this concert of 1 hour and 40 min. of WASP, with or without film.

Nevertheless people seemed to be really happy with it (maybe the members of Talesien not so much hehe).

Well, at least now I can say that I attended to a WASP’s concert. Not very espectacular (like those ones in the 80's and 90's with theatrical stuff and blood... ) but they were and are one of the myths of the 80’s Heavy Metal.

I didn’t take my camera with me, so no pics this time. I didn’t do it cause it was forbidden due to the film they were playing in the screen behind. I guess they will want to make one DVD with that. Too late when I was told in the second part you could make pics of them…