Now that was a rock show.
A no-bones-about-it heck of a rock show.
Thanks, Bryan Adams, for reminding us how it’s done.
Adams brought his show to a sold-out 6,000-plus audience at Red Deer’s Centrium on Saturday night and went way beyond awesome.
Anyone who has ever seen Adams perform knows he works his butt off and Saturday night was no exception.
But he does a lot more than just work hard, he connects with his audience.
Adams does that in a number of ways, though the main one was that he was his regular old unpretentious self.
Of course he wore his usual simple outfit of T-shirt and blue jeans. This time the shirt was black and the jeans were turned up at the cuff.
He chatted with the audience, he turned the mike to them and let them sing the soundtrack of their lives with the guy who wrote much of it, and he enjoyed himself while doing all of the above.
At one point, as the opening bars of Heaven played and Adams stood poised at the mike, the sounds of the audience singing the song floated in to the atmosphere, to his obvious amusement.
Adams always chooses someone to join him on stage to sing with him at his concerts and on Saturday it was Ann’s turn (sorry if I spelled your name wrong).
To say she was excited would be a very large understatement.
This lady was soooooo excited we all felt part of it.
Ann wanted to recognize her friends from the stage before she joined Adams in a rendition of When You’re Gone, and a big group it was. It not only included a husband and daughters, but lots and lots of friends.
As Adams prepared for the song with her, she remembered more names and reeled them off.
It was very funny.
And Ann more than made up for in enthusiasm and rock-chick style anything she lacked in the pipes department.
Bravo!
Adams kicked off his two-and-a-quarter-hour set with the title track from his 2005 album, Room Service.
Then he and his talented band rocked their way through a chunk of the considerable catalogue he’s built up over 25 years.
The songs included This Time, Open Road, 18 Till I Die, A Night To Remember, Can’t Stop This Thing We Started, Lonely Nights, Cuts Like a Knife, Summer of ‘69, I’m Ready, The Only Thing That Looks Good on Me is You, You Want It, You Got It, Run to You, Cloud Number Nine, and (Everything I Do) I Do It For You.
Adams sang an acoustic set at the end of the evening, but took a moment to thank his audience before he began.
“I never heard anything like that before in Red Deer, I got to tell you,” he said.
Adams has a very distinctive, husky voice and it sounds great on full-bore rock songs, but it’s also nice to really hear the voice, as we did during the acoustic set on such numbers as Please Forgive Me, and Straight From the Heart.
“Thank you very much. That’s incredible,” said Adams, sounding humbled by the huge reaction his work brought.
A lot of passion and expression is poured into the songs, whether they are fast or slow.
When Adams last played in Red Deer, back in December 2000, I said it was the best of many excellent shows that had made a Red Deer stop during that period.
It’s five years later and I think I’ve finally seen a better show than the one Adams gave in 2000.
Of course, it took him to do it.
Opening act Daniel Powter and his band made a bunch of new fans.
The laid-back rock selection included Bad Day, which rocketed the Canadian group to stardom in Europe on the heels of its use in a Coke ad.
Other songs included Jimmy Gets High and Wasted.
Powter, a graduate of Edmonton’s Grant MacEwan College, and his band, look set to go far.
Photo by RANDY FIEDLER/Advocate staff
Bryan Adams performs Room Service, the title track from his recent album, to open his show at the Centrium on Saturday night before an enthusiastic audience.
Penny Caster

Source: bryanadams.nu

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