<BACK Fan Reviews [ Def Leppard UK - Feel The Noise Show 2002 ]

SAT 13th Jul 2002: HallamFM Arena, Sheffield, ENGLAND. [4 Pics by HallamFM/Dini (Gallery).] [SETLIST] Let's Get Rocked, Animal, Now, Pour Some Sugar On Me. [Show Notes] :: Capacity 12,500/Attendance about 11,000. Doors: 6PM Show: 7-10:30PM. A pop festival featuring many miming teen acts as well as Lep & Michelle Branch playing live. [Line-Up] :: Westlife (headlining), Def Leppard 9:50-10:10PM, 15 or so pop acts miming to tapes. Michelle Branch, Hear'Say (on first). Fan Review :: by DLUK This was the first time I had visited Sheffield and the trip didn't dissapoint. Met up with some other fans during the day and spent time in a couple of bars and walking through the town centre. The first impression you get of Sheffield is how many hills and climbs there are (this is a Southerner talking...), and how scenic the surrounding areas are. Lots of views off into the distance around every corner it seemed. I saved any sightseeing for the following morning (see Def Leppard's Sheffield Section (soon to be added)). Later on the way into the arena you pass right by the building which used to be the Player's Cafe (now bought by a company using it as office space) which looked abandoned. The show itself was full of pop acts, mostly miming. Some have now become annoyingly popular here in the UK - like Busted etc. After enduring this for almost 3 (very long hours) it was time for Lep. They were introduced by a DJ called Dave Kilner (pictured backstage with the band in black suit above). He talked about having seen them years ago at The Wapentake. The band started playing at about 9:50pm with "Let's Get Rocked" and finally we heard some rocking live music (although Michelle Branch also played live) and they sounded in fine form. After a few moments even some of the kids on the floor with their glow sticks and flashing bobbles on their heads started moving to the music. The band of course slightly modified their usual line in view of the family atmosphere of this event. After getting a pretty big ovation they kicked into my personal fave Lep song "Animal" still sounding as good as ever and again getting a good response. The reaction was pretty good considering most of the young kids in the crowd were waiting for the Irish boy band Westlife to come out after Lep and headline the show. This band are huge in the UK and Ireland, regularly playing big arena tours. The stage set up was pretty bare apart from the lights above the stage. Just a black backdrop and various logos for Hallam FM Radio and Feel The Noise signs. Rick's kit was set-up on a small black drum riser with a wall of about 6 Marshall stacks either side probably only used by Lep and Michelle Branch's band. Either side of the stage high up were two video projection screens showing close-ups. One of the cameramen was on stage right near every singer, sometimes almost tripping them up it seemed. Next up Joe then introduced "Now" by saying it was from "Our new album "X", that's TEN! which is out in a couple of weeks". It was a bit hard to juggle between snapping away with a camera (pics didn't come out) and getting into them and it seemed to be over pretty quickly. The song sounded great live with Joe again "wielding" an acoustic guitar and it seemed to go down just as well as the first two had done. I thought maybe "Now" would be the last song but Joe then said "That was Now and this is...THEN" and they went into a storming version of "Sugar" which had the walls literally shaking. It was great to see the band so well received even by a mostly young pop crowd and that they played live amongst many miming acts. All in all a really good, if way too brief!, performance. I wouldn't want to have to endure almost 3 hours of miming pop bands again though! But I feel proud that I was one of only about 3 people I saw wearing a Def Leppard T-Shirt! PS: Michelle Branch played 2 songs that rocked, 'All You Wanted' and 'Everywhere'. She started off saying "We were gonna do PSSOM but we heard Def Leppard are here so...".

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