** Def Leppard

EUPHORIA

(Mercury)

Made it about halfway through this disc before abject boredom set in. "Demolition Man" is fine if you're the kinda person who can't wait to see Footloose on Broadway, which I sorta am. But I couldn't stop yawning during the Def's attempt at a James Brown funk jam, "All Night," so I switched on the tube. Was only half-watching -- some spandex-clad celebrity all-star concert or other from Miami, so at first I figured it was Gloria Estefan -- until I hear the guitar player start cranking out this awesome vintage AC/DC-via-ZZ-Top riff. And screw me with an antelope if it wasn't Shania Twain doing "Man! I Feel like a Woman." So now my jaw's around my ankles, and then I think I must be hallucinating, because Shania's band start playing (note for note, I'm not kidding) Def Leppard's "Rock On" -- only with different words. (Something about housework called, I think, "Honey, I'm Home.") In the middle it segues into more recognizable Nashville gloss, but in the meantime I'm realizing why even the three songs on Euphoria that the Leppards wrote with Mutt (producer of Pyromania, Hysteria, AC/DC's Back in Black; husband of Shania; etc.) Lange are kinda stale -- Mutt gave his best Leppard song to his wife! And who wouldn't? The only question is how Phil Collen and company managed to pry Mutt out of Shania's soundbooth long enough for him to airbrush "Promises" (from which you'd suspect Mutt thought he was doing Roth-era Van Halen), "All Night," and "It's Only Love." Past that, the Leppards are stuck playing out a dinner-theater engagement adapted from their based-on-a-true-story VH1: Behind the Music spectacular. And who needs that when you can catch the real thing in reruns?

-- Carly Carioli