Concert review: Ryan Adams

Z had a pair of tickets for the show at Harbourfront's Enwave Theatre, but couldn't go, so passed the tickets on to us. As many of you know, I'm not very hip to the pop music of the day (or in this case, the alt. country rock of the day), so I had never heard of Ryan Adams. He apparently has an extensive following, and people were telling us how great he was and how tickets sold out for this show in 15 minutes.

Adams had a piano man, bassist, drummer, acoustic guitar picker and a pedal steel player in The Cardinals, his backup band. The first song sounded OK. Vocals were nice, sound was nice, guitar was nice. Second song sounded a lot like the first one, and so on. Tempo was mostly the same, melodies were similar. Adams wore dark glasses. The lighting on the stage was more like non-lighting. Somebody shouted, turn the lights on, we can't see you, to which Adams replied, sorry I'm busy singing...

We endured about 40 minutes of the show before Tuffy P and I exchanged the knowing glances that could only mean, exit stage right. The audience, most of whom were whooping and clapping like crazy between tunes, heard or saw something that we missed. To us, the show was just boring.

Rating: no anchovies, just the empty can