I’m switching up my post format for this week only due to both music news and a few scheduling conflicts with myself. There will be no Album of the Week this go around, everything will be back to normal next week.

This week’s song highlight is a single from the second W.A.S.P. album The Last Command. The sad occasion to mark this is the death last week of drummer Steve Riley, which I’ll discuss in more detail after tackling the song itself.

W.A.S.P. had made quite a scene with their 1984 debut record and were primed to keep the momentum rolling on with album number two. One personnel change was made – drummer Tony Richards was out and replaced by the aforementioned Steve Riley. The rest of the band was the same – Blackie Lawless on vocals and bass, Chris Holmes and Randy Piper on guitar.

The Last Command released in October of 1985 with Blind In Texas as its lead single. While the single didn’t make much mainstream chart noise, the album did go platinum and the band was bringing in a little cash to go along with its notoriety as one of the “Filthy Fifteen.”

Blind In Texas is a big and loud song, as huge as the state it’s named for. It kicks off from the first note and doesn’t let up once. The entire thing is about getting hammered and shouting out cities in Texas, there is absolutely zero deeper meaning to this song and nothing to be read into. It was one of many early W.A.S.P. Cuts that translated well live, hard to beat a straightforward rocker about getting messed up.

The song is great and full of energy, but the occasion to bring this one up is rather sad. On October 24, 2023, drummer Steve Riley died at age 67 after a long battle with pneumonia.

Riley got going in the Los Angeles scene in 1984 with Keel and their debut album The Right To Rock. Riley was quickly approached to fill the vacant drum position with W.A.S.P., where he would play on two studio albums and one live record. After departing W.A.S.P., Riley was almost immediately taken on in L.A. Guns. He would hang around that group for quite while and eventually wound up in his own version of the band these past few years. A new Riley’s L.A. Guns release had been planned for a 2024 release.

Steve Riley himself had said he was pretty lucky to wind up in both “waves” of the 1980’s rock and metal coming out of L.A. His contributions to that were immense, as a drummer of good caliber he played on music still remembered nearly 40 years later. While he has sadly passed on, his music will continue to live on.