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Monday, 5th October 2015
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St. Paul/Minneapolis, MN - Media Reviews

Def Leppard/Foreigner/Tesla Review By Aaron Chalich

I finally got to see Def Leppard in concert at the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, MN last night.

It seemed like every time they were in town I always had something going on and I could never make a show.

Def Leppard, Foreigner, and Tesla are on tour together and are only playing a few shows and they kicked off their tour at the Xcel Energy Center.

As you may know from reading my reviews that I go to a lot of concerts every year and I have to say that the Def Leppard/Foreigner/Tesla concert was one of my favorites this year. All three bands have some of the best songs ever recorded in my opinion and I am huge fans of each one.

Tesla opened the show and played for about an hour. I thought they were fantastic. If you have never seen Tesla in concert before, you have to see them. They put on a great show and are very entertaining. Tesla played all of their hits such as “Signs,” “Love Song,” and “Modern Day Cowboy,” which is my favorite Tesla song.

I really enjoy watching Frank Hannon and Dave Rude, play the opening for “Love Song.” It sounds amazing and I think it shows off their musical talents.

Foreigner went on at about 9pm and blew the fans away by opening with “Double Vision” which was a great opening song in my opinion. It energizes the fans and gets them out of their seats.

I have seen Foreigner many times in concert and I have been listening to their music ever since I was a toddler. Seeing Foreigner in concert is an amazing experience. Their band is so full of energy and it' awesome watching them interact with each other and with the fans.

At one point Kelly Hanson (lead singer) goes out into the crowd and that was pretty neat. The fans went crazy.

Foreigner doesn’t have a bad song in my opinion and last night they played “”Feels Like the First Time,” “Cold As Ice,” “Dirty White Boy,” “Urgent” “Juke Box Hero,” and ended with “I Want To Know What Love Is.”

The cool thing is that the New Prague High School choir got to go on stage with Foreigner and sing “I Want To Know What Love Is” with them.

The New Prague High School won a contest that Foreigner is doing with Ford called “Drive 4 UR School.” Foreigner is an amazing band and one of my favorites.

I will always make sure to go see Foreigner whenever they are in Minnesota.

Def Leppard’s show started at about 9:25pm and they blew me away.

They were hidden behind a huge curtain that said “Def Leppard” and they opened with “Let’s Get Rocked,” which had the entire Xcel Energy Center exploding out of their seats.

Joe Elliot sounded amazing and so did the rest of the band.

They played “Love Bites,” “Animal,” “Rocket,” Armageddon It” and of course “Pour Some Sugar On Me.” Def Leppard has an awesome stage show and I really liked how they used the background and stage monitors to display videos during their show.

I really enjoyed the Def Leppard/Foreigner/Tesla concert at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, MN a lot. Like I said before it was one of the best concerts that I have seen this year.

There is nothing like the experience of seeing a band in concert and play all of your favorite songs. It’s exciting and something you will always remember.

Def Leppard, Foreigner and Tesla sounded better live than they do on an album or CD. I would highly recommend that you go to one of their shows the next time they are in your area.

By KSTP ABC News 2015.


The war of cool is over, and Def Leppard have won By Sleazegrinder

Leppard deliver a truckload of delicious pop metal candy to the Midwest.

It is either entirely fitting or entirely foolhardy for a band 35 years into their career to open with a song called Rock Rock (Til You Drop), but that's exactly what Sheffield's finest do tonight. The war of cool is over, and Def Leppard, it turns out, won.

It doesn't matter how old you are, or they are, or what year this is, everybody just wants to scream along to Rock of Ages. The band looks great, incidentally, and if there are creaks and groans behind the scenes, they do not take them out on stage. Their set, as you might expect, is littered with Pyro/Hysteria-era cuts, but some earlier (and later) hits crop up as well. Like Euphoria's down-tempo bummer Promises, brought down further by a video backdrop of crying children and war scenes.

Following it up with the soppy ballad Love Bites could cripple a lesser band, but then they rev things back up with Armageddon It, and everything is fine again. The onslaught of rock is broken up mid-set with some razzle-dazzle - Elliott takes center stage solo for an acoustic, crowd-assisted Two Steps, and then dons a top hat for a campy romp through Dave Essex' Rock On. Rick Allen's drum solo is a joyous triumph over adversity, but thankfully it's also fairly brief. We're not here for virtuosity, after all, we're here to tease a little and squeeze a little. And speaking of adversity, some of the colossal backdrops are so impressive - a wall of blinking TVs, a neon-lit street scene - they threaten to engulf the band whole. They're most effective during Hysteria, which serves as a video tribute both to the early days of the band and in particular fallen comrade Steve Clark. Pour Some Sugar On Me is the last song of the set, and it gets the biggest reaction. The aisles flood with middle-aged, Midwestern dancers, arms flailing, legs kicking, completely enthralled with what has got to be one of the most over the top Sweet rip-offs ever concocted. Really, nothing about this loony song should work – it's Def Lep trying to write an 80's rap song, basically – but it's so insanely infectious everyone, including the band, is lost in the rush.

It ends exactly as you hope it will with a triumphant encore of Rock of Ages and Photograph, perhaps the most perfect one-two punch of pop-metal candy ever created. Before they make their grand exit, the band promise to come back next year, maybe even with some new songs. The crowd roar their approval. They may be hurtling towards their fourth decade as a band and their greatest hits are probably already written, but if tonight is any indication, none of that matters. There's plenty of life left in Lep.

Foreigner – OK, Mick Jones and some dudes – warm up the crowd for Def Lep with a veritable (and literal, at one point) jukebox of their toothy 70s/80s FM radio hits. Purists may balk at this Lou Gramm-less iteration of the band (former Hurricane singer Kelly Hansen has been fronting the band since 2005), but there are evidently no purists in the audience tonight – and the crowd eats up megahits like Cold As Ice, Hot Blooded, and Urgent in greedy fistfuls.

By Classic Rock 2015 - Note: 'Paper Sun' was played, not 'Promises'.

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