DEF LEPPARD THUNDERS AND JOAN JETT SNARLS AND PURLS (CONCERT REVIEW)

Def Leppard could be charged with aural assault and battery for Friday night's concert at the Show Me Center, but 5,009 fans loved every thunderous blow.

The 36 Marshall amplifiers lined like cannons across the stage gave notice that the band's dual lead guitars, Phil Collen and Viv Campbell, were there to singe some strings and bare their chests.

The British band that practically invented blastoff sonics, stage posing and sing-along, soccer stadium refrains in the early 1980s delivered all that Friday night. Rick Allen's synthesized drums and Rick Savage's bass rumbled beneath the Stratocaster and Les Paul guitars, and lead singer Joe Elliott's agile voice mixed with his mates' to make some of pop rock's best harmonies.

At times, the roar from the crowd rivaled that of the band known for the musical invitation "Let's Get Rocked."

The hits -- Among them "Pour a Little Sugar on Me," "Two Steps Behind," "Rocket" -- were the concert's main fare but were garnished with tunes off the band's new CD, "Euphoria." It has been called a second-childhood album for fans who first heard the band as teens and are now at an age where they want to relive those feelings.

"Promises," the first single, showcased the band's trademark harmonies while the more musically sophisticated "Paper Sun" built inexorably to its climax.

Beginning its third decade as a rock band, Def Leppard still does a lot of the things Nirvana's Kurt Cobain criticized about 1980s rock "entertainers." But they do them very well.

Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, a band that also dates from the early '80s, opened the concert with an 11-song set that included fresh-sounding versions of hits like "Cherry Bomb," "I Love Rock 'n' Roll," and "Light of Day." Her head shaved bald, the rest of her clad in black leather and red Latex, Jett looked like the quintessential rock 'n' roll animal -- male or female.

She snarled through "Bad Reputation" and almost purred out the darkly sensual "Fetish" from her new CD of the same name. Prowling the stage in front of her crack all-male band, she reminded anyone listening of how much energy punk rock infused into the disco-dead music scene of the late 1970s.

If Jett is a rebel, she is our rebel, turning the theme from the "Mary Tyler Moore Show" into a hyper anthem of girl power. "Do You Want to Touch Me (Oh Yeah)" is about another kind of female power.

Yet "Crimson and Clover," the old Tommy James and the Shondells hit, retains its innocence in her hands.

Then again, she made the audience bark as she sang "I wanna be your dog."