Camden, NJ, USA - Media Reviews

Def Leppard, Journey at Tweeter By A.D. Amorosi

The Sheffield-steely glam of Def Leppard and the album-oriented rock of Journey have zip connection. So, despite being '80s media stalwarts under VH-1 sponsorship, it was hard to tell what Friday's sold-out pairing of those rock elders at Camden's Tweeter Center was meant to convey to its crowd - a mix of over-40s and young teens. Other than that there's no age limit on an audience's ability to ape guitar pyrotechnics and look stupid doing it. And that the mullet is indeed a tonsorial staple of all generations.

Def Lep - MTV's first metal darlings - happily refuse to age gracefully. Instead, the mussiest of hair bands (a compliment, that!) chop-chop-chopped and shugga-shugga swaggered through gutsy glam stuff with equal amounts of icy precision (their signature helium harmonies) and groovy sloppiness (their punchy rhythms).

Glam's tartness was ripest throughout Lep's covers - all featured on their new album Yeah!, out last month. From the growling yelp singer Joe Elliot applied to Sweet's "Hell Raiser," to the hammy ring of guitars that infected Badfinger's "No Matter What," to the clicking bass that steered David Essex's spooky "Rock On," Def was ruggedly theatrical.

But its own songs also got hit with glam's rickety preening. Even at his bluesiest, Elliot added some lipstick to the piggish "Let It Go."

Def's oxygenated hits? The drummed crunch of "Rocket," the stripper pole sway of "Pour Some Sugar on Me," the power ballad chug of "Hysteria," and the creamy near-medley of "Photograph"/"Armageddon It"/"Animal" and "Rock of Ages." You didn't know whether to pump your fist or reapply your mascara.

With bad hair, a Steve Perry look-alike (but not sound-alike) vocalist, and more bloat than a Weight Watchers consult, this bombastic edition of Journey gave middle-of-the-road AOR a bad name. That was no easy feat. But Neal Schon's insistently ascending guitar lines charging atop their insipid melodies (to say nothing of his rock-guy scrunchy face) managed to make it so.

By Philadelphia Inquirer 2006.

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