Def Leppard – ‘Greatest Hits: Walmart Exclusive’ (2025) – Album Review (The Def Leppard Collection Series)

I’m not sure the reason behind this next one. Def Leppard has numerous greatest hits album, but for some strange reason, it was believed the world needed a new one. What we have is simply called ‘Greatest Hits’ and is on vinyl only and Exclusive to Walmart on a rather cool Orange & Yellow vinyl. It was released on Friday, August 29th (I believe) and I got it on that Saturday when I got bored and figured, why not take a drive to Walmart and pick this up. You see, I refuse to order from Walmart.com because my account with the store was hacked and someone bought over $600 worth of stuff…which I was able to dispute and get resolved since I received nothing from this screw up by Walmart!!

Anyway…sorry…went off on a tangent there. Back to this release. This is simply a money grab, pure and simple. And of course they grabbed my money since I collect anything Def Leppard…I know…it is a sickness. But what is great about this release is really NOTHING!! Well, the colored vinyl is cool, but that is it. The packaging is rather plan with an all black background with the Def Leppard logo and in very small print ‘Greatest Hits’. The track listing is SAD…really sad. We have five from ‘Hysteria’, three from ‘Pyromania’, one from ‘High ‘n’ Dry’ and one from ‘Vault’. That is it! 10 tracks that we have a MILLION FREAKING TIMES on other greatest hits compilations. And no insert! Nothing new, nothing special, nothing to run out and grab unless you are a fool like me.

SIDE 1:

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Def Leppard – ‘Tokyo 1999: The Japanese Broadcast 2 CD Set’ (Bootleg – 2022) – Album Review (The Def Leppard Collection Series)

Def Leppard toured extensively for their latest album, ‘Euphoria’, which came out June 8, 1999. That tour brought them to Japan where they played 8 shows, three of which were at Tokyo’s famed Kokusai Forum where this disc was recorded. It is said that this was the October 1st show. However, the bootleggers have it wrong. The band only played “Wasted” on the October 2nd show which was actually recorded in full and broadcast on the radio and it was actually filmed to be shown on TV as well. Why we don’t have an official release of this show from the band is strange. We do have a few songs that from this show that were released on The Collection, Volume 2 Box Set on the Rarities 3 LP from that set.

As with most bootlegs, this CD has one glaring mistake. Look at the picture below and see if you can spot it. And no, it isn’t the fact the picture is with some of the members of Journey. Nope. It is the fact that the picture has the late, great Steve Clark in it who died back in 1991 a full 8 years prior to this release. He isn’t even on this release so shouldn’t have a picture. The bootleggers, however, seem to get all the song titles right and even the spelling. That is pretty rare! Now, that is all I have on this release so let’s get to the show which is the full set list with 22 songs and almost 2 hours worth of music spread over 2 CDs…it is awesome. And one cool thing is they play at least one song from every Leppard album released to date. Good job boys…good job!

The album opens with “Rock! Rock! (Till You Drop)” which is played at 100 mph as the band seems to be in a hurry to get through it. The band sounds fantastic though, guitars are crisp, drums are powerful and Joe sounds terrific. Always a great opener. And they don’t slow things down as they rip through the Sweet cover of “Action” and I do love Lep’s version of this one. They made it their own. A high energy romp that keeps the pace at breakneck speed. They go in to the first new song and play “Demolition Man” and talk about fast…holy crap I think they sped it up the tempo even more. It is bam bam, next song, bam bam, next song…you get the idea. The new song fits well into the vibe of the live setting. I dig it.

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Def leppard – ‘Rarities 2’ (2019) – Album Review (The Def Leppard Collection Series)

On June 21, 2019, Def Leppard released the second set in their four volume The Collection box set. There is a CD and a vinyl version of the set and my set is the vinyl version. It is 10 LPs and contains the albums, ‘Adrenalize’, ‘Retro Active’, ‘Slang’ and ‘Euphoria’. It also contains 2 Rarities collections called Volume 2 and Volume 3. Since we have already discussed the albums in this set, it is time to start with the rare tracks now and first up is ‘Rarities Two’ of the set. It is a 2 LP release and contains some rare tracks and rare live performances as well. All the songs are from the years surrounding these four albums.

LP 1:

It kicks off with a demo of the song “Tonight” from the ‘Adrenalize’ album. The song sounds like the final version with minor exceptions. Musically, it isn’t fully flushed out, the “oohs-aahs” aren’t full gang style yet and pretty simple sounding. Still a lot to get it to the final stages, but cool to hear an early version of the song.

Next, we get a demo of “When Love & Hate Collide” from the greatest hits album “Vault”. Is another stripped down version of the final song. I don’t like the guitar tone on this one as there is this little high pitched riff throughout that annoys the crap out of me. They definitely improve on that for the final version. Joe’s vocals are not high in the mix and have a weird echo, but the essence of the song is there.

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Def Leppard – ‘Hard Rock Cafe: Singapore, Malaysia – October 26, 1995’ – (Bootleg DVD) – DVD Review (The Def Leppard Collection Series)

On October 26, 1995, Def Leppard played an acoustic show in Singapore, Malaysia at the Hard Rock Cafe. The show was filmed and broadcast by Channel V as part of their V Series concerts. Channel V is their version of MTV. Six songs from the show were later released on the Limited Edition of the UK ‘Slang’ album.

This bootleg DVD I have was recorded from teh show on the Television. It is a little grainy because TVs were not 4k back then. The sound quality is really great. There is an audience recording of this show out there somewhere that has two additional unreleased songs (at the time). The two songs were from the upcoming ‘Slang’ album. The songs were “All I Want Is Everything” and “Where Does Love Go When It Dies”…I’d like to hear those two pre-Slang songs.

The stage is small and intimate. Vivian Campbell, Rick Savage, Joe Elliott and Phil Collen are lined-up and everyone has acoustic guitar…welll Rick has a bass (not acoustic though). Rick Allen is banging away behind them on the drums. They kick it off with a high energy performance of “Pour Some Sugar on Me”. The band is having fun and the crowd is loving it. Between each song, we get short little interviews and I normally don’t like the show to be interrupted, but this was a TV show, not an actual concert so I can be okay with it.

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