Bryan Adams @ SOFMA, Victoria BC

As with all artists this long into their careers they can't do all our favorites and Bryan missed a lot of my choice cuts from his back catalog. He completely ignored his debut album which has the excellent "Hidin' From Love" which was one of his best songs and damn near my favorite from him. With that said he didn't sing the awesome album track "Wastin' Time" or his other single from the debut "Don't Ya Say It". So he also decided to eliminate his sophomore album which had some much better material than what he chose. The ballad "Coming Home" and the mid-tempo gem "Lonely Nights" off the playlist as well.

He did do the triple threat from Cuts Like A Knife which was nice but the painful acoustic slowed down version of "I'm Ready" instead of the kick ass album version really annoyed me. I hate how he took a great song and murdered it with that drivel arrangement. His vocals were excellent as he sounded just as you'd expect from listening to his albums. The band for the most part was excellent although his drummer made a lot of lazy mistakes while doing fills and such. I would have liked a more thunderous sound from his kit as well. It was a little soft which at the tame volume made some of the songs like "The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me" timid.

The drum solo was cool and the most original drum solo I've seen at a concert ever. That says a lot because I've been to a ton of shows and seen the very best drummers in the world multiple times. Bryan is actually a very good guitar player and his cohort Keith Scott who outside of his awful solo runs in "It's Only Love" was also very good. It is nice to see a solo artist keep such a long tendered partnership going in the music industry. Norm Fisher who I met many moons ago when he was just an up and coming bass player in Vancouver, to my surprise, was now backing up Adams. He's become quite the session musician since his first run with Burton Cummings back in the 80's.

Of course Reckless filled out much of the set list which included "Run To You", "Heaven", "Somebody" and the cheesy gawd awful "Summer Of '69" a song I've hated since the day I bought the album back in 1984. Which obviously got the biggest pop from the crowd because for some reason people like that piece of shit song. He also played "Hearts On Fire" from the commercial disaster known as Into The Fire the album that followed Reckless and failed miserably in the shadow of the much better material that preceded it.

The Mutt Lang produced, written, directed, engineered Waking Up The Neighbours made a strong showing as well in the set list. Songs like "Can't Stop This We Started" and "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You" sounded fantastic and "There Will Never Be Another Tonight" revved up the tempo nicely right before they left for the first encore.

Overall though he does too many slow songs for my liking and he could have eliminated stuff like "House Arrest", "Thought I'd Died and Gone to Heaven", "Do I Have to Say the Words?", "Please Forgive Me", "Victoria Bound" and the abysmal goo "All For Love" and replaced them with much better material like a couple of previously mention tracks or "It Ain't A Party, If You Can't Come 'round", "East Side Story" or even "She's Got Away" but the one staple that was missing and sadly so too was "Diana" one of my favorites for sure.

After all is said and done though no concert set is perfect for everyone and this one was still very good and c'mon he didn't torture my ears with "Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman" so I'm pretty happy with that! I enjoyed the concert and I actually loved the massive screen backdrop used mostly for the band. I think that made the show much more enjoyable along with the little talking between songs as well. He came and played music for nearly two and half hours with hardly any time spent on dumb chatter. Not a lot of classic acts can make you feel you got more bang for your buck as Bryan Adams did so easily.