By JAY ROBERTS

The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and underappreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.

W.A.S.P. – LIVE…IN THE RAW (1987)

Back in October of 2025 when I discovered that I hadn’t written about any W.A.S.P. album in all the time I’d been doing The Cassette Chronicles series, I wrote about the band’s self-titled debut album.

In that article, I mentioned how I’d first become aware of W.A.S.P. not through their studio recordings but rather from seeing an ad in music magazine for the release of their new live recording Live…In the Raw. 

If I remember correctly I was struck by the slightly macabre cover art. This is a bit funny to me since I’m not much of a horror fan and the cover looks like something that you would’ve found as the box art for a 1980s slasher flick.

But when I saw that artwork, I was intrigued. So I went out and bought it on cassette and man, I was blown away. I was mid-teens by this point and loved anything that thumbed its nose at “polite” society, thinking I was one of those people (totally turned out not to be the case) that did so as well. 

The live album serves as a marker point for the end of the first part of W.A.S.P.’s career. I also own the album on the CD and that version has an essay that declares the album as being the “end of an era”. And considering the change in musical direction and growing maturity in the writing that came with the next studio album (The Headless Children), they weren’t underselling that point.

The Live…In the Raw album has eleven tracks on it. The first ten are the live show and it all starts with a great intro from whomever had the job of introducing the band: “Long Beach Arena…They have returned…for the final night of their 1986-87 World Tour! The most outrageous band in the world…W.A.S.P!”

As many times as I’ve listened to the album over the years, I still get a jazzed up feeling hearing that intro and the band launching into the song “Inside The Electric Circus”. There’s a slow build and then accompanying thump as the lead into the song in full ramps up.

And while I’m certainly no audiophile, I think this recording sounds fantastic. It captures the band at their peak. Blackie Lawless sounds great here and the rest of the band is certainly keeping the fire at full burn musically.

Eight of the selected tracks for the show come from the band’s self-titled album and both The Last Command and Inside the Electric Circus releases as well.

It’s funny to think that I somehow managed to BS my way through a term paper in English class my junior year by writing about W.A.S.P. and their lyrics. Especially considering their song titles and lyrics were far from being subtle. I mean the first side of Live…In the Raw has the song “9.5.-N.A.S.T.Y” just as a tune-up for everything to come.

But despite the fact that Lawless considers the Inside the Electric Circus album his least favorite release from the band, the title track is perfect to kick off the show. You can just imagine the crowd going crazy as the band played this track.

They follow that with a cover of the Ashford & Simpson song “I Don’t Need No Doctor”. Considering the original song is a R&B number, this might be one of the strangest covers for a metal band to do, but W.A.S.P made their own version of the track, ramping everything up to ten and leaving the original song in the dust.

Following that up with “L.O.V.E. Machine” and “Wild Child” before you get to “9.5.-N.A.S.T.Y.” in the track listing. The first side of the album ends with the ballad “Sleeping (In the Fire)”. That’s from their first album and like I said in that article, the album has aged perfectly and remains a ballad that I can actually enjoy even now.

When you flip the cassette over to Side Two, you get the full bore anti-authoritarian stance from Blackie Lawless that made me sit up and take notice from the first time I heard his stage rants on this album.

Given that they still must not have been allowed to include the song “Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)”, the second half of the album opens up with the first of two tracks that were written specifically for the Live…In the Raw album and weren’t on any of the three studio albums. That track is called “The Manimal” and by way of introduction, Lawless refers to the track as being “The son of “Animal” before he launches into an explanation about the song’s origins (or at least what I think is the song’s origins anyway). The intro might give those given to handwringing these days a bit of a pause, but the song is actually pretty tame lyrically. Now, don’t let that fool you into thinking the song isn’t any good. It’s still prime early-W.A.S.P. and the single entendre dripping sexuality dripping from the lyrics is there for all to see.

The song “I Wanna Be Somebody” comes up next in the set list and if you are wondering how it sounds live, let me just say that there’s a reason this song is still going strong more than four decades after its original release.

Now for me, the second of the two songs written specifically for the album is pure defiance from Blackie Lawless and his battle against the PMRC over censoring music. And in the intro for the song “Harder Faster”, he fires both barrels at them with what he says from the stage. I used to be able to do the piece word for word from memory but I had to look it up in order to include it in this article. 

“Let me ask you something. I’ve been reading an awful lot in the newspapers and the magazines about me and my boys here. And I was reading one article in particular about an organization, you might heard of them before, they’re called the PMRC.

Well I read, I read that they said that they think that We Are Sexual Perverts. Now, this is coming from an organization called The Washington Wives. And I don’t know about you, but to me, that sounds like some sort of goddamn Jackie Collins Hollywood fuckin’ novel if you ask me. Well this is for that whole bunch, because they can “Suck Me Suck Me Eat Me RAW!” This is “HARDER FASTER”.”

Oh man, I tell you I freaking loved that intro. I may have thrown the middle finger in general every time I heard that song just on principle alone. And as he ends that last line, the music kicks in and it is a fully rocking track as the song serves as a musical response to all the crap W.A.S.P. and metal bands in general were facing from self-appointed moral crusaders.

The show closes out with what might just be W.A.S.P.’s signature track “Blind in Texas” which is just a balls-out rocker that seems to get better each time you hear it.

But as the live show comes to a close, there is still one track remaining. It’s a studio cut called “Scream Until You Like It” and it was used on the soundtrack for the horror film Ghoulies II. It’s a pretty decent track in my opinion though I’ve only heard it on Live…In the Raw and not from viewing the movie itself or anything.

While my enjoyment of most live releases has waned over the years, those live releases I discovered back in the 1980s still hold a special place in my musical heart. And it is no surprise that W.A.S.P.’s Live…In the Raw stands out to me as one of the best of the 1980s.

NOTES OF INTEREST: The album was reissued on CD in 1998 and included four bonus tracks. Three were live tracks, though I don’t know if they came from the same show as the main album cuts or not. Those songs are “Widowmaker”, “Shoot From the Hip” and “Sex Drive”. The final bonus track is an acoustic version of the song “Sleeping (In the Fire)”.

This was the final album to feature drummer Steve Riley. He left the band after the tour and joined L.A. Guns. Riley passed away in October 2023.