W.A.S.P
Elysée Montmartre - Paris, France
December 15, 2009

So, this was a very special night for me, it was my first W.A.S.P. concert inside a venue.
I had seen this band previously twice at the Gods Of Metal Festival (2001 and 2004), but a festival show is never like a headlining show.

This show was first scheduled at the Locomotive but it was moved to the Elysée Monmartre two weeks before. The reason? The Locomotive is closing. That’s a sad news, the Locomotive was one of the concert venues I had ever been to. It was smaller, but far better than the Elysée Montmartre.

La Locomotive was bought by its neighbour, the Moulin Rouge, to build a tourist restaurant.
That’s crap.
My deepest thoughts to all the former personnel and employees from la Locomotive, and many thanks for so many years of great and unforgettable concerts.

As for the Moulin Rouge management guys, go to hell.

This was going to be my last concert at La Locomotive, but finally my last show there was in late 2008, for the band Ten Years After.

Well, let’s get back to W.A.S.P..
I had a lot of expectations for this show, and I wasn’t disappointed!

The sound was incredibly good. I have rarely heard such a good sound at the Elysée Montmartre.

Blackie’s voice was perfectly balanced with all other instruments. The lights were OK but nor transcendental. A nice lightshow, but almost minimalist.

Now, the band’s performance was just incredible.

The setlist contained a lot of my favourite songs, including Arena Of Pleasure, and two other tunes from The Crimson Idol.

That’s my favourite W.A.S.P. album, and really regret to have missed the 2008 tour, when they played the record in full.

Mike Duda doesn’t move a lot I did see him a lot because he stayed at the right side of the stage for most of the show.

But he spends most of his time headbanging and smiling to the first rows.

Doug Blair moves a lot around the stage and keeps headbanging all the time.

He used two beautiful customized guitars on that show.
One had a (fake) moving circular saw.

The other guitar had a sort of a stained glass window on its body, looking like a gothic cathedral window.

The guitar had it’s own lightning system so the “painting” was always lit. The guitar’s frets had also red lights.

Blackie Lawless was in a very good shape today. He sang great and seemed in a good mood.

He was wearing his back shirt with blade saws on its sleeves.

And… with Doug’s guitars, that’s pretty everything much we had for the “show” part.

There was no motorcycle-like microphone stand, no fake blood anywhere, no characters coming on stage for a song, no skulls, no chainsaw, no pyro… nothing!

The only particular thing about the stage set was a giant screen behind the stage, showing the video clip from every song they played.
I wonder if even the W.A.S.P. guys have the master tapes of those video clips, because some of them were the same quality that what you can see on youtube.

At least, W.A.S.P. proved that it’s one of the few metal bands that don’t deny it’s 80’s video clips.

So, do you think that’s not enough for a concert from a band that used to play in the high leagues of shock rock? I don’t.

When you watch W.A.S.P. concerts on TV you expect a show, not only music. If you want to watch W.A.S.P.’s video clips, it'd be cheaper to turn on YouTube than paying a concert ticket.

So, I could have been disappointed, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t disappointed because the band gave their best musically, with a great sound and a great performance.

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Setlist W.A.S.P. – Elysée Montmartre, Paris, France – December 15, 2009

01. Mephisto Waltz
02. On Your Knees
03. The Real Me (The Who)
04. L. O. V. E. Machine
05. Crazy
06. Babylon's Burning
07. Wild Child
08. Hellion / I Don't Need No Doctor / Scream Until Your Like It
09. Arena Of Pleasure
10. Chainsaw Charlie (Murders in the New Morgue)
11. The Idol
12. Take Me Up
13. I Wanna Be Somebody
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14. Heaven's Hung In Black
15. Blind In Texas

W.A.S.P. Links:

W.A.S.P. Line-up: