DEF LEPPARD ROCKS THE SHOW ME CENTER

More than 6,000 screaming fans stood for the duration of the 2-hour, 23-song Def Leppard concert at the Show Me Center Wednesday night.

Kids of all ages danced through a montage of Def Leppard classics that spanned the band's 15-year career in a concert experience that far surpassed any descriptive nomenclature.

Prior to the beginning of the concert, fans were asking one another how the band members were going to get to the 100-by-75-foot stage, which was completely surrounded by fans.

But fans seated on the east side of the Show Me Center were privy to the band's scheme.

Minutes before the show was to start, stage hands pushed two covered laundry hampers and one large black box down a thin corridor to the stage. The bounty the boxes were carrying were the band members themselves.

Due to technical difficulties, the band's appearance on stage was delayed 45 minutes past the original starting time of the concert.

But once the five-member band took its place on the theater-in-the-round type stage, the delay was quickly forgotten.

Band members climbed onto the stage and took their places beneath a large, black tarp suspended in the middle far above the floor.

Joe Elliott, lead vocalist of the band shouted, "You wanna get rocked?," launching the band into one of its most recent hits, "Let's Get Rocked."

The show was a nonstop stream of hit after hit.

The concert culminated in a slash-metal version of "Rocket," off the band's fifth album, with an impressive light show.

Dozens of lasers flashed off mirrors mounted on the huge scaffold, which held hundreds of colored lights.

Large bulbs descended from the ceiling, loaded with pivotal lights, brushing just a few feet above the heads of the cheering fans on the floor.

Near the end of "Rocket," the revolving drum set raised more than six feet off stage level, spinning as a thick fog emanated from somewhere beneath the floor.

The band members winded their way across the stage in a state of constant movement. The center stage and rotating drum-set made every seat the best in the house.

Members of the band also treated the screaming crowd to two electric guitar solos and a sing-a-long acoustic session, which ended in a full-fledged metal attack.

In quick succession, the band played "Armageddon It," "Pour Some Sugar On Me" and "Rock Of Ages."

The members then disappeared beneath the stage floor, waiting for the fans to lure them out with their screams.

About five minutes later, they re-emerged to finish out the show with "Love Bites," from the "Hysteria" album, and they finished with a song more than a decade old, but as classic as any Rolling Stones or Van Halen hit of yesteryear, "Photograph."