By MIKE ROSS --

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.

There were a lot of hard-core Def Leppard fans at the Dome last night, and yes, it was "kind of neat" to see such a famous band playing on the same stage Trooper will occupy on Monday. But for a good number of lucky winners, Edmonton's Blind Date was a disappointment. You can bet that Joe Elliott and his crew won't remember it as one of their best gigs, either.