Live At The Budokan

Three years after the release of 1998's On a Day Like Today, Bryan Adams had not gotten around to completing a new collection, so he and his record company, A&M, kept the pipeline supplied with product, releasing the 2001 compilation The Best of Me and the DVD Live at Slane Castle. By 2003, there still didn't seem to be a new album in sight, so A&M pressed up a 2000 concert Adams had performed at the Budokan arena in Tokyo that had been broadcast on Japanese television, releasing both a CD/DVD package and a DVD-only version. On the latter, his fourth live recording in the last eight years (counting 1995's Live! Live! Live! and 1997's MTV Unplugged CD and DVD), Adams turns in a bare-bones show. It's just him, on bass and vocals, Keith Scott on guitar, and Mickey Curry on drums, all of them decked out in white T-shirts, jeans, and sneakers and playing white instruments on a bare stage. All that white gives the lighting designer a chance to throw some interesting patterns on the trio, but that's it as far as staging goes.