TORONTO -- It really feels like Canadian rocker Bryan Adams should be a lot older than he is. He has, after all, been making albums for 23 years, but the husky-voiced singer-songwriter-guitarist is only 43 years old.

More impressively, not many artists who were huge in the '80s and early '90s, can still pack 'em in like Adams did last night at the Molson Amphitheatre where he played to a sold-out crowd of 16,000 during his first performance in the city in three years.

The evening started out as a no-frills affair, with Adams and his four-piece band -- including long-time guitarist Keith Scott and drummer Mickey Curry -- nonchalantly taking the stage before launching into One Night Love Affair from Adams' massively successful 1984 disc, Reckless.

From there, the performance, which ran just under two hours, took about five more songs to really get going.

The concert's rousing middle section saw Adams effortlessly deliver one anthemic rocker after another: Can't Stop This Thing We Started, Back To You, Summer of '69, and the highlight of the night, It's Only Love.

It should also be mentioned that Scott's animated guitar solos ignited the audience on more than one occasion with the band's entire sound crisp and full.

Adams even managed to make his most famous -- and perhaps most nauseating -- ballad, (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, digestable by playing it primarly on the acoustic guitar.

FIREWORKS

Other standouts like Cuts Like A Knife, Heaven and Run To You needed no reworking whatsoever.

The fireworks going on the background at the CNE towards the end of the show didn't hurt either.

Looking as slim and boyish as ever in his trademark T-shirt and jeans, Adams took mischievious delight in bringing up a cute female fan from the audience to join him on When You're Gone.

Last night's version of the duet, which originally featured Mel C. -- a.k.a. Sporty Spice -- singing alongside Adams, saw Julie, a Pickering native studying psychology at York University, give it her best hip-wiggling shot.

And even if she couldn't really sing, nobody seemed to mind.

Least of all Adams.

"Some people say musicians have a stupid job - I actually thiink it's a pretty good job," he said with a grin afterwards. (More on Bryan Adams)

JAM! Rating: 4 out of 5