It’s showtime!!!!

"C'mon, Porvaznik, you know damn well you still have and wear the combo. 'fess up, lad!"

Recently mentioned in these here interweb parts how Facebook’s good for more than catching up with old classmates. Sometimes, though, it’s nice to simply jog through old memories. Ridiculous “Can you believe we got away with that?” moments interspersed with remembrances of first kisses, first heartbreaks, naive first times we never thought we’d experience emotions we’d actually visit time and time again. We — OK, mainly I — also do our best to forget the clothes or hairstyles, and I definitely hope nobody from my St. Mary’s Middle School days has any snapshots of me wearing the above attire, a Christmas gift in ’83 I sadly wore to basketball practice on more than one occasion (Mr. Rossi, you should have kicked me out of practice). I’ll never shy away from a near-thirty-year love affair with the boys from Sheffield’s music, but some things are better left unseen. Huh, what do you know, I guess there are ways of embarrassing me after all, just not with this week’s Better Late Than Gone Forever selection …

DEF LEPPARD / Pyromania (1983)

Real quickly before moving on to the meat of this week’s pick, as Dave Grohl likes to scream, I got a confession to make: until last week, I never paid for a new copy of this album. Carried around a well-worn BASF cassette copy a former St. Mary’s classmate [name withheld to protect the guilty accomplice] recorded until college, at which point I popped a whole buck for a used LP — hey, cool, artwork! Toyed with actually buying the CD many times throughout the almost 20 years since then, but priorities being what they are, had to buy the Leps’ High ‘n’ Dry and On Through the Night first. More importantly, amongst the major record labels, none were worse in pumping out substandard sounding CDs than Mercury/Polygram — I’m convinced they placed a wet sponge somewhere in the mastering process, dampening the music beyond belief. Of course, once discerning listeners required better quality recordings in order to actually shell out the dough for CDs in an already dwindling market, few labels have redeemed themselves better than Mercury/Polygram (Universal Music, my appreciative thanks for pumping up Polygram’s bank account).

So, in a stunning move of music-oriented patience (or being a cheapskate, take your pick), my ears were finally rewarded last week with not the best Def Leppard album (in my book, that’d be the ferocious High ‘n’ Dry and not, not, not the overproduced, overplayed and largely soul-less Hysteria), but undoubtedly the one which grabbed me by the neck and got my (formerly) scrawny body bouncing around the room, air-guitaring and driving family and friends crazy (sorry, though, gang, I’ll only apologize for the Union Jack shorts/muscle shirt combo). However, and here’s the surprising kicker, Live – LA Forum 1983, the bonus album in the Deluxe Edition, has been in the player more than Pyromania.

If it’s never been mentioned in my columns prior to the Hysteria slam above, the likes of producers John Robert “Mutt” Lange, Bob Rock and Jeff Lynne do far more harm to rock and roll than good as far as I’m concerned. Sure, they know how to craft a good melody or bring out a catchy riff in a band, I’ll grant them that. Have enough love of pop music to not-so-reluctantly give credit where it’s due. On the flip side, though, and much to the detriment of the raw spirit of rock and roll I cherish much more, Lange and company far too frequently suck the life out of heavy metal/hard rock bands by laboring and over-perfecting what made the bands with whom they work worth listening to in the first place. Yes, I realize “Mutt” produced AC/DC’s amazing breakthrough albums Highway to Hell and Back in Black, as well as High ‘n’ Dry, but I’m convinced he hadn’t quite gained the confidence by that point to be the raging control freak he became as the 80s progressed.

On that overly processed note, judging from the looseness and uninhibited nature only a live setting can afford, it’s a revelation to hear what might have been with Pyromania if Def Leppard hadn’t spent nine months recording and tinkering and re-recording and tinkering even more (or I’d been a couple years older so I could have gone to see this tour, but that’s a lament for another time).

Captured after most of a 1983 spent on the road in support of the radio- and MTV-friendly album, not only does the Forum disc play as a pretty kick-ass greatest hits album at that moment in Leppard history (two from On Through the Night, six from High ‘n’ Dry, six from Pyromania and a show-closing cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Travellin’ Band,” featuring a guest appearance Queen’s Brian May and nice snippet of Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll”), it spotlights a band freed from the studio and set loose to be the rock stars they’d grown into throughout the tour (it’s funny when reading the liner notes to be reminded they opened for Billy Squier at the beginning of ’83).

While the songs themselves don’t deviate much from their recorded versions, the slight up-tempo, courtesy the two Ricks (Allen and Savage) rhythm section, with which they’re played live takes them, dare say, to a notch slightly above ten. And, oh God, the guitars come full-center, too, blessedly minus the keyboard/synthesizer layering Lange tacked on in the studio. Not that Steve Clark and Phil Collen (replacing Pete Willis) could ever be mistaken for the twin guitar assaults of Dave Murray and Adrian Smith, or KK Downing and Glenn Tipton, but Def Leppard’s inclusion in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal pantheon along with the much louder Iron Maiden and Judas Priest wasn’t not because the guys couldn’t play some blistering riffs and solos (did I just lose myself in a triple negative???). Whether it’s Clark’s acoustic guitar on “Foolin’” or Collen bringing his more glam rock style to “Rock! Rock! (Till You Drop),” being on stage allows them to be themselves, maybe missing a note here and there or extending a solo a few bars. Vocalist Joe Elliott feels completely at home as well, jovial emcee between songs and encouraging the crowd along like the ablest of front-men while the band careens around them all.

Gawdamn do I hope my Facebook buddies are having as much fun with this album as I am.

STRANGE POST-SCRIPT: Bizarre and sad reminder at the tail-end of the Pyromania album. Following album-closer “Billy’s Got Gun,” after propelling the album on a regular kit, drummer Rick Allen pounds out a looped outro on synsonic drums, a spooky foreshadowing of how he’s been forced to play on all albums since Pyromania, after losing his left arm due to injuries suffered in a 1984 car accident. Hey, I said it was a sad reminder, but I couldn’t not mention something that’s been sticking in my head for almost 25 years (that’s right, just a double negative this time).

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