EDMONTON - Until last night at Rexall Place, I had never seen Nickelback live.

Yes, I should probably turn in my "I love Alberta beef - and Nickelback" bumper sticker.

Nickelback, a raised-in-Alberta band, has ascended to rock stardom's upper echelons. As they're from here, last night's sold-out show isn't all that surprising. We want to see our boys that made good.

However, the Canadian reputation for politeness is exacerbated in Alberta, where we're plagued by a misplaced sense of provincial pride. This is true of Nickelback. We're willing to forgive anything - even mediocrity - so long as it finds an international audience that allows us to say, yeah world, you're welcome.

Medicine Hat-raised country star Terri Clark, who happened to play at Rexall on Friday, is another telling example of our apologists' sense of rah-rah.

On her latest album, Life Goes On, Clark's cliched lyrics are best read in a Dr. Seuss rhyming style - they are that funny. Still, Clark made it big in Nashville so all is forgiven.

Nickelback, too, found an American audience - the ultimate validation - so who cares if hits like How You Remind Me and Someday more or less sound alike? The band knows about the wayward MP3 that syncs the songs together (try Googling "How You Remind Me of Someday") to illustrate their sameness.

Nickelback, of course, don't concede a formulaic dependency.

If you think I'm being too harsh, know that I was a Nickelback fan from way back - 1996 to be exact - when I picked up the band's independent EP, Hesher. While it was still somewhat derivative of the early '90s Seattle sound, waning at that point because of Kurt Cobain's suicide, Hesher was still a solid collection of rock tunes. Many of those same tracks appear on the band's debut album, Curb, and apparently Hesher fetches a decent chunk of change on Ebay as a collector's item.

So, that said, the question is whether I could leave my Nickelbaggage at Rexall's door.

But before I get to that, let's talk about how Danko Jones's three-piece upstaged everyone. I can't say how refreshing it is to bear witness to a real rock star - Jones is the real deal, opening act or not.

With a set of straight-ahead power chord rock, Jones ran through songs about kissing on the first date preceded by others about seeing you in hell. He had me laughing only because of my amazement at his presence. A hybrid of the Headstones' Hugh Dillon and a spastic storyteller with Gene Simmons's tongue , Jones made me believe, won the crowd over, and put that much more pressure on Live and Nickelback.

In the same way I hoped Nickelback could channel that decade-old vitality, it was Live's back catalogue of hits I was most anxious to hear.

Live's never been able to match the success of Throwing Copper, its 1994 breakthrough album. Having said that, Awake, Live's best-of album from a couple years ago, demonstrates the band's longstanding command of melodic rock.

Not, however, soft rock; Live lead Ed Kowalczyk's voice carries too much weight. And Live did everything right. They played enough classics like Lightning Crashes, I Alone and Lakini's Juice so as to actually make you interested in their upcoming album, Songs from Black Mountain.

Nickelback - the shame of Nickelback is that they're not an especially bad band, nor are they a truly great one. It makes their success that much more confounding.

Unlike the opening acts, Nickelback weren't restricted on stage - lead singer Chad Kroeger was allowed to step past this unspoken barrier on the stage's catwalk that neither Jones or Ed Kowalczyk did, or was allowed to.

Nickelback's stage setup was also complemented by fireworks, a massive six-panel light display behind the band, cannons shooting free swag and flames shooting up from the stage floor. A lot of gimmickry that cast all the more light on the band's inability to carry a show based on its own artistic merit.

Kroeger's songs about growing up in small town Alberta could have been small town anywhere and his one-dimensional growl made every song drift by that much more anonymously.

If nothing else, for a merely passing talent, Nickelback is well-managed. The light show is a great distraction, and opening acts like the superb Danko Jones and Live, who played great sets without the benefit of parlor tricks, are another. Ultimately, Nickelback's lack of imagination played right into my narrow-mindedness about giving them the benefit of the doubt.

In the future, Alberta, I implore you, set aside your misplaced patriotism and bestow your love on bands that really deserve it - Live and Danko Jones for a start. We're all people, after all.