Besides all the stunts and flash you hear coming from guitar players, there's plenty to look at it too. For every arpeggio, bent note, and power chord they dish out there's usually a corresponding move or face. And though many players' mugs may seem pained or perhaps mid-coital, Donny Mancuso's is that of 100 percent joy. I don't know if I've seen a guitar strapped to a happier guy.

"It's from the soul," he says. "It's just something that's built into certain people. You know, you pick up a guitar and you become a different person. It's what I live for."

Whether playing in The Lou Gramm Band or his own D-Drive, Mancuso's feet are rarely on the ground as he rocks crowds - whose asses are rarely in their seats - with arena-era, blues-tinged guitar. Presence aside, Mancuso is a tonal master, twanging the spectrum from throaty glass pack roars to silky stratospheric pleas.

You can hear them all in D-Drive's just-released second record, "Straight Up The Middle";an excellent album of guitar-driven heavy rock. Once again Mancuso mans a mean guitar. But by playing for most of his 50 years he has learned how to avoid stomping on the music despite his thick and thunderous sound.

"I was from an Italian family and they wanted me to learn an instrument," he says. "I started out learning the "Tarantella," "Little Brown Jug" and all that."

Sports came into play and Mancuso dropped the guitar for a bat for a while. But shows by area bands like heavy blues-rockers Rain at area junior highs re-lit the spark.

Mancuso joined up with Lou Gramm (then still known as Lou Grammatico), Bruce Turgon, Larry Crozier, and Ron Rocco to form Black Sheep in 1973. It was his senior year in high school. But in order to hit the road, he was gonna have to drop out. So Mancuso packed his book bag along with his guitar.

"I was doing well enough in school and they said, ‘If you do your homework and come in for the tests and pass, we'll give you your diploma,'" he says.

Black Sheep did two albums with Capitol Records and one single with Chrysalis Records. The group toured with a lot of the mid-'70s heavy hitters like Blue Oyster Cult, Ted Nugent, 10 Years After, Peter Frampton, Hall and Oates, and even KISS.

"We did the tour they recorded ‘Alive'on," he says. "They were never without makeup at that point. Sound checks, going out to dinner, it didn't matter. They'd be in full garb."

Black Sheep was on the same road to stardom as the bands they toured with. Mancuso generally wasn't all that star struck. OK...maybe once.

Mancuso was at The Record Plant in New York City, recording in Studio B when he bumped into John Lennon in the commissary while getting a cup of coffee.

"He was sitting there working on some lyrics or something," Mancuso says. "He looked up and said ‘Oh, you're in Studio B.' And I'm like, ‘Yeah, you're in ...OH MY GOD...' He shook my hand and I think I uttered ‘The Beatles.' And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah but I'm not with them now, everybody wants to get their solo career going, you know?'"

Black Sheep broke up in 1976 and Gramm moved on to sing with Foreigner. Mancuso eventually wound up in Cheater, a popular group at the time lead by singer Jeff Cosco that had regional success with the song "Ten Cent Love Affair." Between gigs with Cheater Mancuso continued to work with Gramm on his solo projects starting with "Ready Or Not"in 1987.

The late '90s found Mancuso on the cusp of another deal with the band Linda Rutherford and Celtic Fire. The group played the Emerging Artists Stage at Woodstock '99 before Rutherford disbanded the group to raise a family.

But with his main focus now on D-Drive (when not on the road with Gramm), Mancuso is back with what he really loves.

"Mainstream hard rock," he says. "It seems to be a niche that's still there for fans from 6 to 60; people that are into melodic rock who are actually going out there looking for it because it's not readily available."

Records like "Straight Up The Middle" oughta change that, as it seems more and more kids - including Mancuso's three boys - look to this music after modern rock has let them down. Mancuso recently performed with his youngest son, Donny, for his eighth-grade talent show. Young Donny even sang on a couple tracks on the new D-Drive disc. The other two sons, though "music fanatics" according to their dad, don't seem likely to follow him down the rocky rock 'n' roll road.

"They see what I go through," Mancuso says, "and they say ‘That looks like too much work for not enough money.'"

Donny Mancuso's D-Drive celebrates the release of "Straight Up The Middle"with guests Mystic Jayyd and Evil Twin Saturday, May 19, at The California Brew Haus, 402 Ridge Road West, 621-1480, 9 p.m., $10.