Def Leppard releases worthy companion to 'Hysteria'

Stephen H. Provost is the author of Pop Goes the Metal: Hard Rock, Hairspray, Hooks & Hits, chronicling the evolution of pop metal from its roots in the 1960s through its heyday as “hair metal” in the 1980s and beyond. It’s available on Amazon.

"Do you really, really wanna do this now?" Joe Elliott asks at the outset of Def Leppard's self-titled 2015 release.

My answer? Hell yeah. I've been waiting nearly 30 years for a worthy follow-up to Hysteria, and it sounds to all intents and purposes like this is it. That's not to say that The Leps' other releases between then and now didn't have their share of highlights, but - with the exception of the fantastic cover album Yeah! (2006) - they haven't put all the parts together in a single release since then.

That changed with this fall's eponymous outing, which guitarist Phil Collen has called "probably the most diverse thing we've ever done." Full disclosure Part 1: I don't write many music reviews (this is the first one on this blog). Full disclosure Part 2: I've been a Def Leppard fan since I first heard Rock Brigade on the radio in 1980, and the only published music review I have written was of a DL concert earlier this year.

The Leps didn't play any songs from the new CD at that show, and it had been so long (seven years) since they'd put out an album of all-new material, they caught me napping and sneaked this one by me, releasing it in October when I wasn't paying attention.

This album accomplishes something unique: It manages to be derivative and entirely original at the same time. That might seem like a cut, but it's not. Only a band with this level of expertise and breadth of influences could manage to acknowledge so many of them and still sound fresh 35 years into their recording career. No, this won't rocket to the top of the charts the way Hysteria did back in '86 (pun intended) - musical tastes have changed too much. And I'm not going to go as far as to say it's a match for that classic CD, but it comes a lot closer than anyone had a right to expect.

Bands often go through a three-album "peak" during their careers. The Beatles had an arc of Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper. Queen had A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races and News of the World. (I mention those particular bands in part because their influence is apparent on this album.) For Def Leppard, it was High 'N' Dry, Pyromania and Hysteria - three releases produced by Mutt Lange.

(Fun exercise: Take a listen to Honey I'm Home by Lange's then-wife, Shania Twain, and tell me it doesn't sound like countrified Def Leppard.)

To climb back close to that level at this stage in their career is quite an accomplishment, and they've done it by paying tribute to both their influences and their own history. The album opener, Let's Go, was obviously written to be a concert opener, as well. With lyrics like "welcome to the carnival, welcome to the party, welcome to the edge of your seat," it of reintroduces the band to its audience in much the same way KISS reintroduced itself with the tune Psycho Circus  17 years ago (has it really been that long?).

Let's Go sounds familiar right out of the blocks. It starts off like the intro to Let's Get Rocked (Adrenalize, 1992), morphs into a riff reminiscent of Pour Some Sugar On Me (Hysteria, 1987) then takes off in a different and thoroughly satisfying vein altogether. The band's fondness for Queen, which has surfaced at various points throughout their career, appears for the first time in this track, the album's first single: I could almost swear that's Brian May on parts of that guitar solo.

The album's second track, Dangerous, is reminiscent of Promises, one of the two best tracks (with Paper Sun) off 1999's Euphoria, spiced with a dose of Hysteria-era styling. It doesn't quite live up to Promises, but it's not a pale imitation, either.

It's the third track, though, that seems the most familiar of any on the album. Try singing the lyrics to Queen's 1980 megahit Another One Bites the Dust along with the music to DL's Man Enough. It doesn't quite work, but it's close, and the fact that both tunes are built around pounding bass lines makes them seem even more similar. In all, Queen's heavy bass-funk era is my least favorite, but even with that said, I found myself enjoying this tune. It works the same way DL's take on Rock On worked on Yeah!

We Belong, the fourth track, is a lighter-raising ballad along the lines of Hysteria that, again, doesn't quite live up to that tune - but not much does. It's also fun to hear different members of the band take turn on vocals, giving Elliott a break. As Phil Collen proved on a dynamite cover of Rod Stewart's Stay With Me (Yeah!), he has the chops to carry off lead vocals.

The next three cuts - Invincible, Sea of Love and Energized - all hold their own. I liked the first of the three out of the gate, and the other two grew on me with repeated listening (this is the first album in years that I've enjoyed enough to keep on continuous iPod repeat for more than a day). Sea of Love particularly has quite a kick, but it offers an inverted song structure: The verses rock hard, while the chorus chills out a bit. This put me off initially, but I got to like it as time went on.

The second half of the album is, if anything, stronger than the first. At 14 tunes, it's actually two songs longer than Hysteria, although its running time is about 8 minutes shorter because the cuts are more compact.

All Time High features a rousing chorus that sounds like something out of the Pyromania/Hysteria era. It's followed by Battle of My Own, which slithers along through the sonic Bayou like a gator on the prowl. One of the album's best cuts, it's also one of six that founding member and bassist Rick Savage had a hand in writing. (Interestingly, that collection doesn't include the bass-heavy Man Enough.) Each of the six is among the album's standouts.

If you can get past the opening lyrics ("I'm not well, I'm mad as hell. Come over here, I'll ring your bell"), Broke and Brokenhearted really rocks, with a mid-section jam that keeps it humming along through a charged-up, fast-paced 3-plus minutes. 

Forever Young is probably the only song on the album that I tend to skip past. I can't tell you exactly why; it just didn't quite work for me.

The last three songs, however, more than make up for any deficiency there. The acoustic strummer Last Dance (a tune Savage wrote solo) sounds like something the Eagles might have left of The Long Run and reminds me a bit of Orleans' Dance With Me. 

Wings of An Angel sounds the closer to High 'N' Dry-era DL than anything else here, and stacks up well against cuts from that classic release. 

But it might be argued (and I will contend) that the band saved the best for last with Blind Faith, which veers from intense acoustics to Beatlesque bridge to bombastic rock near the end. In that sense, purely on structure, it's built like a condensed Bohemian Rhapsody. The Beatlesque interlude sounds like something straight out of Strawberry Fields Forever and is, fittingly, introduced by the phrase "follow you down" - a takeoff on "let me take you down?" Perhaps.

If you think I'm overreaching with the Queen comparisons simply because I count both bands among my all-time top 5, I'll defer to Elliott, who made the comparison himself in an interview: "Every single aspect of anything we've ever wanted to put out - acoustic, heavy, soft, slow, fast - it's there. That's why we call it 'Def Leppard,' because, just like Queen were, we're capable of coming up with vastly different kinds of songs."

Bands routinely talk up their latest releases as the best thing they've ever done, and they're almost always full of hot air. But while Def Leppard-the album may not be Hysteria or Queen's A Day at the Races, it's as close as anyone's come in a long time.

Bullying for a cause: You don't get to make me feel sad

The savage and heinous assaults on innocent civilians in Paris that took place on Nov. 13 have unleashed a predictable torrent of self-righteous indignation on social media. 

• "Facebook's providing this really cool French flag overlay. Why aren't you using it on your profile picture? Are you heartless?"

• "Do you really think using changing your profile is going to accomplish anything? You're just trying to make yourself feel better. Quit being so shallow."

• And my favorite: "What about all the people who died in those terrorist attacks in Kenya and Beirut? Why didn't you change your profile picture then, you xenophobic so-and-so?"

Ah, social media. The place where good intentions somehow become bad vibes as users rush to judgment like jackals on a feeding frenzy, laughing in ridicule at people they call their "friends" as they feed on the corpse of human tragedy. If that sounds harsh, it's intentional. Because this is what people look like when they go around demanding that their friends be sad.

My response to all this: Who are you to tell me why to feel sad? Come to think of it, why do you want me to feel sad in the first place?

It seems to me the height of arrogance for one person to tell another, "If you feel sad about this, you must feel sad about this other thing, too. And not just sad, but equally sad. Heck, more sad, because it's more important to me."

Compassion should know no boundaries. It shouldn't be dependent on where we live in the world, what color our skin is or whether we worship (or decline to worship) this or that deity. But demeaning someone for showing compassion in one case and failing - according to your definition - to show it in another won't resolve anything. What it will do is make compassionate people angry at and wary of one another. Instead of railing against each other, shouldn't we be focusing on the problems that are making people sad in the first place?

News flash: Most people don't enjoy being sad. Or outraged. Most people want exactly the opposite. They want happiness, support and respect. Heaping tragedy upon tragedy and demanding that people be sad or outraged about each new one in turn won't heal us from those that have already occurred or prevent others from happening down the road. It's going to do the opposite. It's going to make people numb and indifferent.

I'm sorry, but you don't get to make me feel sad, no matter how worthy your cause or how justified you may feel in your judgments. And if you think calling me racist or xenophobic or ignorant or insensitive is going to help your cause, go right ahead, because, you see, I know it won't. All it will do is encourage me to tune you out. That's what people do when people start calling them names.

People don't like being attacked - even in the name of what someone else considers "a good cause." Those of us who have been bullied know from experience that our tormentors often hide behind "good causes" to justified their actions. When someone tries to "convince" us by using force, guilt or manipulation, we stop listening to the message and pay attention to the method. People who use such tactics often do so because they're trying to hide some deficiency in their argument. Most of us won't even analyze their motivations to that extent. We see what we perceive as a threat, and our fight-or-flight response kicks in.

Sometimes, the squeaky wheel doesn't get the grease. Sometimes it gets ignored and just falls off. And sometimes it gets replaced altogether.

It's inhuman cruelty we're trying to stop here, not compassion. If someone shows compassion, and you say, "Yes, but," I can't see how that helps the situation. Awareness doesn't come through judgmental declarations (which, incidentally, the purveyors of fear and cruelty are very good at making themselves), it comes by spreading compassion. And compassion never spreads through demands and accusations. It spreads through encouragement and empathy.

So please, if someone's sad about something, don't jump down that person's throat and say, "Yes, but what about (fill in the blank) ... ?" Meet compassion with compassion. That's the way it grows.

Pithy Comebacks to Buffoonery on Social Media

I recently attended a book signing by bestselling author John Scalzi, where he read a selection from his blog titled "Standard Responses to Online Stupidity." There, he presented some witty rejoinders to online buffoonery. (My favorite: "My attention is a privilege, not a right. This is all you get.")

Since he's graciously featuring my guest contribution on his website today, I thought it might be fun to come up with a few comebacks of my own for use in similar situations. I've tied them to a few well-known axioms. Some of the results are particularly cutting, and I doubt I'd use them on anyone short of a mortal enemy (of whom I don't have any). But please don't tell anyone, as acerbity can be an effective deterrent.

1. Your logic leaves something to be desired. Just not by anyone I know.

2. No, Teddy Roosevelt did not say, "Type loudly and act like a big prick."

3. Politics makes strange bedfellows. Which explains why you're so crabby.

4. Discretion is the better part of ... a concept you're obviously not familiar with.

5. He who fights and runs away online is more commonly known as a troll.

6. I'm sorry, but faith can't move mountains if you put yours in a broken bulldozer.

7. Take your ball and go home. It's overinflated anyway. Oh, wait, that's your ego.

8. Cat got your tongue? My mistake. He's in the litter box, which must mean you're full of ...

9. I'll give you the benefit of my doubt. Here's my doubt. Now go benefit from it.

10. I'd be happy to make a gentleman's agreement, but you'd have to be a gentleman.

11. I won't just agree to disagree with you. I'll celebrate it with a trip to Disneyland.

12. I'm afraid that, in order to be a man of your word, you'd have to be literate.

13. If you've learned from your mistakes, you must be a full-blown genius.

14. A penny saved isn't worth spending on your thoughts.

15. If at first you don't succeed at arguing online ... do us all a favor and give it a rest.

16. I'll give you special dispensation to judge a book by it's cover, since it's clear you've never looked inside one.

Note: These work for Facebook, but since they're all fewer than 140 characters, they're nicely suited to Twitter, as well.

It must be OK to be who we really are

Violence against transgender individuals must stop now. Do you have any idea what it's like to be told you must be one way even though you know you are another? Of course you do. Society tells each of us every day that we must be this or that, even though we know we are something else entirely. 

We are told we "must" be "housewives" or "breadwinners" or "good Christians" or "patriots," whatever those things mean. (Like so many other sweeping generalizations, their meanings are open to an endless number of interpretations). Yet we are unique individuals, not cookie-cutter caricatures, and dignity demands that we be acknowledged for who we are, whether that involves gender identity, as it does for some of my friends, or artistic identity, as it does for some others.

I often hear people say, "Put yourself in another person's shoes." But we're already there. We wear those shoes today, at this very moment. Perhaps our lives aren't being threatened because of it. But we're there nonetheless: just a heartbeat away from disapproval or marginalization by those who may decide, at the drop of a hat, we don't fit their status quo. Our lives and livelihoods might not be threatened now, but there but for the grace of God - or the luck of the draw - go we.

Who among us can say that no one ever demanded that we be something or someone we're not - that we MUST "get with the program" or be alienated and demeaned? If we're honest, none of us can say that. That's why I stand with LGBT individuals, and that's why I will continue to stand with them. They pose no threat to me. The true threats are spoken by those who say, "You're not allowed to be 'that way.' That “you must conform to our preconceived notions.”

How many times have I been told this? Too often. Yet not as often as many others.

It's easy to make fun of people who aren't like us. It seems to make us feel superior. But that feeling is a mirage bought at great cost: the cost of our own honesty, self-respect and, worse still, at the cost of innocent lives not fully lived. Should we not invest instead in something real: the right of self-expression and the freedom to be who we truly are? That's not too much to ask. Indeed, it's the most fundamental thing most of us ever ask for. And we, each and every one of us, deserve nothing less.

The Force Would Not Be With the Empire in a War With the Federation

Ever wonder how a battle between the United Federation of Planets and the Galactic Empire might play out? Wonder no more. Here's why the Federation (Star Trek) would defeat the Empire (Star Wars) without even breaking a sweat.

1. Cloaking technology - advantage Federation. Yes, Kirk and Spock stole this from the Romulans, but that only goes to show they're better spies, too.
2. Transporter technology - advantage Federation.
3. Logic - advantage Federation (no Vulcans in the empire).
4. Artificial intelligence - advantage Federation. Sorry, R2D2, but you're no Data.
5. Time travel capability - advantage Federation.
6. Navigational prowess - advantage Federation. Yes, Han Solo is a decent improvisational pilot, but he doesn't stack up against Data, Dax or Sulu; besides, when did he ever engineer a trip to the past by attempting a slingshot maneuver around a star?
7. Weapons capabilities - advantage Federation. Comparing a light saber to a phaser is like comparing a broadsword to a machine gun. That's not to mention photon torpedoes, quantum torpedoes and the potential doomsday use of the Genesis device. Two words that would be enough to make Vader soil that plastic-plated "armor" of his: Locking phasers. 
8. Tractor-beam technology - advantage Federation. Just lock onto that Death Star and haul it into the nearest black hole.
9. Empaths - advantage Federation (no Betazoids in the empire).
10. Diversity - advantage Federation (more than 150 member worlds vs. lookalike storm troopers).
11. Bad-ass warriors - advantage Federation. Can you name a single member of the empire who could stand up to a Klingon warrior with a bat'leth? Or without one, for that matter? Jar-Jar Binks, maybe? Jabba the Hutt? I think not. The Federation could also call on Mr. Spock, Kira Nerys, Jadzia Dax, Hikaru Sulu and others who are quite skilled at physical combat.
12. Shield (force field) technology - advantage Federation. Two words that should strike terror into the heart of anyone aboard the Death Star.
13. Medicine - advantage Federation. Let's see: McCoy, Crusher, Phlox, Bashir, Pulaski, EMH (The Doctor). Do they even have physicians in the empire, let alone tricorders? How about dermal, bone and cellular regenerators? Thought not.
14. Financing - advantage Federation. The presence of a Ferengi (Nog) in Starfleet and another (Quark) on a Federation space station gives the Federation a definite edge in terms of raising enough gold-pressed latinum to finance the very short war that would be needed to force the empire's surrender.
15. Engineering expertise - advantage Federation. Does the empire have anyone approaching the skill levels of Montgomery Scott, Geordi LaForge, Miles O'Brien, B'Elanna Torres or Trip Tucker? Does it even have engineers at all, or is everything held together with duct tape and the Force?
16. Holodecks/suites - advantage Federation. Great venues for everything for combat training to R and R. Nothing like that in the empire.
17. Quality of opposition - advantage Federation. Starfleet has faced off against the Borg, Klingons, Romulans, Andoreans, Jem'Hadar, Changelings, Cardassians, rogue Vulcans, genetically engineered humans, crystalline entities, Xindi, time-traveling Suliban, Mirror Universe alter egos. ... I'll stop there. Talk about opportunities to hone your skills. The empire lost its shirt at the hands of the Rebel Alliance, which would be like the Maquis conquering the Federation. Um, no. Not gonna happen.
18. Leadership - advantage Federation. I'll take Sisko, Kirk, Picard, Archer, Janeway, Spock, Data, Sulu, Scotty, Dax, etc. over Vader's posturing and Palpatine's bloated arrogance any day. I'll also take Spock's logic over any Jedi's nebulous talk about the Force without hesitation.
19. Space travel - advantage Federation. Starfleet has multiple classes of starship featuring creative designs, not to mention space stations, runabouts, shuttles and so forth. Most Star Wars ships, by contrast, look like glorified USAF fighter jets or battleships floating out in space. Starfleet ships also come equipped with warp drive, and Deep Space Nine offers immediate access to a wormhole. We're looking at a fleet of Ferraris and Porsches standing next to a bunch of rickshaws and Model-T's.
20. Natural abilities - advantage Federation. Yes, Jedis can wield the force, but that's no match for Q, who, despite his mercurial nature and propensity for creating obstacles, always seems to have the Federation's back when it's most needed. And if Starfleet managed to locate and enlist the help of Kevin Uxbridge ... well, do you really mean to suggest that Palpatine or Vader would be any match for a Douwd? 

The fate of the Galactic Empire would be decided the moment Picard said, "Make it so," and the war would be over faster than a replicator could deliver a steaming cup of Earl Grey to his eagerly waiting hands.

Independence Day: The Perfect Time for Independent Thought

As a child, Independence Day was my favorite holiday – because of the fireworks, of course, and because it meant that, the following day, I’d get to blow out candles, eat cake and open presents for my birthday.

Now that I’m an adult, it’s still one of my favorites. I don’t get as many presents these days, fireworks won’t light up the sky in many places because of the fire danger caused by the drought, and I shouldn’t eat cake because of my diabetes. (Shhhhh. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m going to do that anyway. I’ve given myself permission to indulge once in a blue moon.)

These days, the reason I like the holiday is what it stands for: not just the birth of my nation but even more than that, as the name indicates, independence.

It marks the date of publication for the Declaration of Independence, a document that begins memorably by naming three “unalienable” rights: Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Independence meant, according to those who penned this document and the 56 men who signed it, the ability to exercise these “self-evident” rights.

Almost half the Declaration is a laundry list of grievances against the British Empire, the authors’ justification for declaring their freedom from what they described as “an absolute Tyranny over these states.” Each of those grievances, these men felt, denied them one or more of those three basic rights they spelled out in their introduction.

They made their case to the world in this document, published on July 4, 1776.

This happened before the adoption of the Constitution, which wouldn’t even be drafted until more than a decade later. It happened long before two major parties came to dominate the nation’s politics. It was before the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement, before greenbacks and the Red Scare, before the “liberal media” and “conservative talk radio.”

The Declaration’s authors were writing on a clean slate, and the first three principles they highlighted were Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Philosophically, everything else the nation, and we as citizens of that nation, stand for rests on that – even the Constitution. Whereas the list of grievances in the Declaration set forth the founders’ ideas of what freedom wasn’t, the Bill of Rights laid out what they thought it was: specific rights to such things as a public trial, free assembly and expression, freedom from the establishment of religion by law, and so on. But again, all were based on those three self-evident, founding principles set forth in the Declaration.

If we interpret the Constitution in such a way that infringes upon Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, we may not be breaking the letter of the law, but we’re violating its spirit. Its inspiration.

As an author, I can tell you that, without inspiration, there would be no story, let alone a happy ending.

Independence was meant to be not only the beginning for these United States, but the mechanism by which we endured from one happy ending to the next. Not just independence as a nation, but independence as people.

The grievances in the Declaration might be summed up in the simple, defiant statement, “No one’s going to tell us (or U.S.) what to do.”

That’s why the Fourth of July is more than a celebration of our nation’s independence. It’s an affirmation of our independence as individuals, of our freedom to assert those three unalienable rights.

We can’t do that without independence of thought, without the willingness to stay off the bandwagon. The willingness to question the dogmatism of our politicians, religious leaders, buzzwords, sound bites and ad campaigns – those professed “truths” that seek to pass themselves off as self-evident when they may not even be true at all.

We can argue until we’re red, white and blue in the face - wrapping ourselves in the language of patriotism as much as we want - over how to interpret the Constitution.

But unless our interpretation upholds those three unalienable rights that undergird the Declaration, we do ourselves and our country a grave disservice.

That may not be a matter of law, but it’s essential to spirit.

The spirit of 1776.