TORONTO -- If Bryan Adams proves anything with his current cross-Canada tour of mid-size venues, it may well be this: A good time to see the singer in concert is when he has a best-of album to promote.
Adams' current Best Of Me collection provided a solid basis last night for the first of two sold-out shows at Massey Hall.
It also gave him the perfect excuse to yank out as many hits as history has allowed him without having to wade through some latter-day fodder just to boost album sales.
Likewise, his 3,000-strong audience -- whether members of the Adams faithful, who made a strong showing last night, or fairweather fans out for a bit of reminiscing -- didn't have to feel guilty about screaming out for the faves.
The concert also proved that, despite the much-hyped "intimacy" of the tour, a relatively small hall like Massey isn't the best place to see Adams. Not yet, anyway.
Of course, the mid-sized venue tour may not have been intentional: Adams' camp claim the jaunt was cooked up at the last minute to accompany a publicity tour in support of his new book of photography, Made In Canada. But falling album sales over the last five years suggest the singer could have a hard time putting 15,000 or 20,000 behinds in arena seats.
The scaling-down certainly looked like it was a hasty process.
Backed only by longtime guitarist Keith Scott and drummer Mickey Curry, who've been playing with him since the early '80s, Adams has made the weird choice of taking up bass duties for the tour.
Dwarfed by the instrument, the ageless Adams looked like a teenager in his first new wave band, especially given the 2001: A Space Odyssey stage decor, complete with matching, cream-coloured Marshall stacks and glaring all-white outfits.
It didn't take long for the novelty to wear off and the limits of his four-string skills to take over.
The trio seemed to let the songs decide whether they would work in the setting or not: Opening tune Back To You, from Adams' 1997 Unplugged release, became a deft blast of power-pop; bland pop number Can't Stop This Thing We Started somehow sounded trim and fresh; and Adams scored perhaps his best goal of the night with a dark re-think of his earliest trademark love ballad, Heaven.
Surprisingly, shoe-ins like Summer Of '69 and Cuts Like Knife were full of gaps when they should have been reeled-in tight in power-trio style. Besides, turning the mike on the crowd just proved how quiet a chorus of 3,000 can sound.
Old habits die hard.
Still, though it was up-and-down like a toilet seat from the get-go, Adams' long set was consistently decent enough to prove that his instincts as a people-pleaser are intact.
JAM! Rating: 3 out of 5
Canadian Tour Reviews
Jubilee Auditorium, Edmonton - Jan 19, 2000
Centennial Hall, Winnipeg - Jan. 17, 2000
National Arts Centre, Ottawa - Jan. 8, 2000
Metro Centre, Halifax - Jan. 4, 2000
