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15/05/08 - SOUTHERN THEATRE, COLUMBUS, OH Review by Gary Budzak (The Colombus
Dispatch) It was the summer of 1983, and people were singing "Na na na, na na na na, na na" along to Bryan Adams' catchy hit Cuts Like a Knife, watching him open for Journey and sticking posters of the pop rocker wearing skintight vinyl pants on their dorm room walls. It's now close to the summer of 2008, and people are still singing along to Bryan Adams, who thoroughly entertained a packed Southern Theatre last night with an impressive solo acoustic concert. Some things haven't changed in those 25 years, like Adams' raspy voice, lean physique, and judging by the squeals from the women in the audience, his looks. Gone are the vinyl pants, though, replaced by simple, all-dark duds. The stage was pretty simple, too – several lights, a music stand with sheet music and three harmonica racks. Adams didn't have a chair: He stood and strummed his guitar throughout the nearly two-hour show. It was a fine show, too, well-paced with a mix of fast and slow, old and new (from the just-released album 11), but all-original songs. Although he's gone the solo acoustic route before (on 1997's MTV Unplugged), Adams admitted this was his first tour in that format, and that doing his songs this way was like "rediscovering" them. "Did anyone tell you there was no band?" Adams said to the audience after his first two songs. "Who cares?" a woman behind me yelled back. He really didn't need a band, either, with the audience singing along on practically every song and clapping out a rhythm when asked. Adams, 48, was utterly comfortable, interacting with the fans, joking about his capo (a device clamped onto the guitar strings to raise its pitch), inviting women from the upper balcony to sit in two of the few empty seats in the house (they took him up on it), handing out picks, quips, compliments and gratitude. He even took requests, digging back into his catalog to pull out Remember, a song he wrote when he was 18. After a couple of standing ovations and encores, Adams had sang 23 songs and many of his biggest hits, including Straight From the Heart, Somebody, Heaven, Run to You, Heat of the Night, Please Forgive Me, Let's Make a Night to Remember, Can't Stop This Thing We Started, When You Love Someone, All For Love and of course, Summer of '69. Now, I'm not exactly an Adams fan. In the past, I've liked a couple of his songs (especially This Time and the Tina Turner duet It's Only Love, both of which he played), but felt like he did too many sugary love ballads, including a duet with Barbra Streisand. But I have to say, Adams won me over with this concert, not just with his style, singing and picking, but with pluckily playing decent new original material like Oxygen and Walk On By and choice past cuts like Hey Elvis, which includes these cool verses: "Hey Elvis, can't ya see / They need you back in Memphis, Tennessee / They're makin' records but there's nothin' new / Nobody ever done it quite like you." Now, Adams wasn't as poetic as Bob Dylan, profound as Bruce Springsteen, or droll as John Prine, but he was every bit as engrossing and energizing as these sometimes solo unplugged troubadours. Besides, I'd rather see a good one-person show than an over-produced lip-synced dance routine any day. Setlist: | |||
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Thanks to Bryan King for the setlist. Look out for a full recording on bryanadamslive.net |