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Wednesday, 26th October 2005
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Louisville, KY - Media Reviews

Def Leppard and Cheap Trick rock The Gardens By Randell Bolton

The Def Leppard/Cheap Trick rock 'n' roll show stopped at The Gardens on Wednesday night, and while it might have been easy for both bands to just go through the motions, they did anything but.

Def Leppard is celebrating 25 years in the business by taking to the road to perform songs from their entire catalog. Mainly leaning on the hits, they had the near-capacity crowd on its feet all night.

The band started the hit machine rolling with the third song of the set. The crowd roared when Def Leppard ripped through "Let It Go" from "High 'N' Dry," "Foolin'." from "Pyromania" and "Hysteria" from the album of the same name, interspersing vintage video clips on the overhead screens.

Def Leppard did inject a few newer songs into the set. A cover of Badfingers' "No Matter What" and David Essex's "Rock On" bookended their own classic, "Love Bites." After that, the hit machine was in full gear. The band tore through solid versions of "Rocket," "Photograph," "Animal" and "Rock of Ages." An encore featuring "Bringin' on the Heartbreak" and "Pour Some Sugar on Me" was just icing on the cake.

Not to be overlooked, Cheap Trick turned in a solid hour's worth of material from their own sizeable catalog.

From the beginning, Robin Zander & Co. let it all hang out. Things got rolling with the classic "If You Want My Love," which sounded amazingly fresh, and climaxed with the anthemic "I Want You To Want Me." Throughout the set, guitarist Rick Nielsen paraded around with samples from his outstanding guitar collection. He played on a double-neck, a five-neck and a "Flying V." He even went so far as to give one away to a lucky fan in the front row.

Cheap Trick wrapped up their set with crisp versions of the power rock classics "Surrender" and "Dream Police." The show was opened by Ricky Warwick, who delivered a competent 25-minute set of acoustic-based rock.

By Courier-Journal 2005.

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