TORONTO -- Finally, a capital R Rock Star who still knows the difference between playing a show in a club and playing a CLUB show.

After being shut out Thursday night at the MuchMusic Video Awards, Bryan Adams hauled his ass three blocks down Queen West to the congenial beer-and-smoke pit known as the Horseshoe and played what can only be described as a quintessentially Canadian bar gig.

Forget all that Blind Date business, where a headline act trucks in 14 semis worth of equipment and basically stages its arena show for a room of 400 people.

Adams and his longtime band used the same bare-bones set-up it had performed on at Much: bass, drums, a couple of guitars, and a keyboard. No backdrop, no strobe lights, nothin' but the most basic tools of the trade.

And none of this "let's play exactly the same set we've been playing for the past six weeks and get the hell out of here." Starting with a good-naturedly wobbly cover of Stevie Ray Vaughan's The House Is Rockin', Adams took requests, covered both Louie Louie AND Gloria, and even invited fans on stage to take over on lead vocals (unremittingly badly, we might add).

Hell, during Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman, an entire chorus of women, all clad in black dresses, drifted onstage, not to sing, but to DANCE to the damn song.

To top it all off, Adams cranked out an impromptu version of the unofficial Canadian national anthem, Takin' Care Of Business, then proceeded to sing both his AND Tina Turner's parts on It's Only Love.

Proving once and for all that, while a lot of performers can move from a bar to a stadium, only a choice few also know how to do the reverse.