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24 Years Ago DEF LEPPARD Go For Blind Date In EDMONTON

Def Leppard 1996. Def Leppard 1996

Def Leppard played a small surprise club show on the Slang tour in Edmonton, AB on 6th September 1996 and a media review is available to read.

Two local Edmonton newspapers reviewed the show which took place at the Thunderdome (a small club venue).

The band were booked to play the Molson Blind Date in place of Goo Goo Dolls.

The idea of these shows was to have contest winning fans not know who the surprise act would be until the show started.

The extra date was added to the band's main Canadian tour and played between shows in Calgary and a show at the larger Northlands Coliseum in the same city the night after.

Some of the 700 people in attendance did not take to Leppard being the surprise band and "bottled them".

Leading to Joe threatening to beat them up and/or call the cops.

They would go on to play a few more small club dates on the tour in Exeter, England in November at the end of the UK tour for contest winning students.

Plus a show in Buenos Aries, Argentina in April 1997.

They played shorter sets and some rare songs at these shows although the exact setlist for this Edmonton gig is not known.

Read excerpts from two media reviews below including some of Joe's on stage quotes.


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Visit the Album News section for more news on new music (based on band member quotes).


Edmonton Sun - Concert Review Quotes

Dates don't always work out like you want them to - especially if it's a Blind Date.

There were some long faces at the Thunderdome last night after the Molson mystery band turned out to be Def Leppard. Holy redundancy - the band is playing at the Coliseum tonight!

Andrea Sutherland, one of about 700 contest winners in attendance, said she would've preferred "pretty much anybody but Def Leppard," though she admitted it was still "kind of neat." Others just left the bar in a snit.

A couple of fools were apparently so disappointed that they started heaving drink glasses at the band, prompting singer Joe Elliott to launch into several enraged, expletive-laced tirades, at one point even threatening to leave the stage.

"If anyone is not enjoying themselves, come up on stage right now," Elliott snarled after stopping drummer Rick Allen in mid-beat, directing a threat at the glass-throwing moron: "I will tear your head off, s--- down your neck, then we'll report you to the cops and you'll go to jail ... we deserve better than that."

Of course they did.

To their credit, Def Leppard still managed to deliver a satisfying rock 'n' roll show for the faithful crowd of fans crushed to the front of the stage (if you can believe it, crowd surfing even broke out during Pour Some Sugar On Me). While clearly out of their element, the Leps plowed through their catalogue of hits like the pros they are. Songs like Rocket and Rock of Ages were ... oh, I won't go on - just read the review of tonight's concert in tomorrow's Sun.

In any case, Def Leppard hitting the stage was kind of an anticlimax to the whole thing. Only a club's worth of people caught the show last night, but the whole town's been buzzing about it for months.

Blind Date is a brilliant and diabolical idea. It flies in the face of how music fans relate to their favorite bands - they buy tickets, spend weeks in anticipation, know what they're going to get and generally leave the concert satisfied. Not knowing what you're going to hear beforehand is an alien concept to rock 'n' roll.


Edmonton Journal - Concert Review Quotes

Def Leppard, who took the Thunderdome's stage in front of 700 people, is hardly bigger than Metallica, or even Soundgarden, the group which kicked off the promotional concert series June 15 in Vancouver.

And that, coupled with the fact that you'll be able to scalp a ticket to see Def Leppard tonight at the Edmonton Coliseum for, say $15, made for a rather dull surprise.

The veteran British metal group took the stage to a roar and, to their credit, played a fine set, churning out hit after hit with a raw edge that's sorely missing from their painfully overproduced studio work.

Old hits like Armageddon It and Photograph, laid bare and powered up to an ear-splitting 11 through the amps, were a welcome change from the lite-metal gloss that covered the band's recent abysmal albums, Adrenalize and Slang.

The band wisely stayed away from those records and concentrated more on songs from Hysteria and Pyromania.

Lead singer Joe Elliott, who tossed back drinks he bummed from stage-side fans and low-fived the audience members crushed in front, was in relaxed form until someone threw a glass on stage.

"Any more glass on stage, we leave," Elliott snarled before threatening to tear the guy's head off and call the cops on him.

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