Hey.
What can I say?
Sometimes you have to make a living.
Bryan Adams.
In Vietnam!
For fuck's sake!
But fate, as it does, threw me a curveball and presented a lady with whom I subsequently fell madly in love.
Can't work out whether she scared me on the night or I thought she was a ditz or I had more pressing matters to deal with.
But we rose to an encore.
What can I say?
Sometimes you have to make a living.
Bryan Adams.
In Vietnam!
For fuck's sake!
But fate, as it does, threw me a curveball and presented a lady with whom I subsequently fell madly in love.
Can't work out whether she scared me on the night or I thought she was a ditz or I had more pressing matters to deal with.
But we rose to an encore.
“EVERYWHERE YOU go, the kids wanna rock,”
sang Canadian Bryan Adams, and his Vietnamese audience endorsed the view
– though some of them seemed a little uncertain how to rock.
Adams’
debut in Ho Chi Minh city was the biggest concert in Vietnam since Bob
Hope tried in vain to boost the morale of US soldiers fighting a lost
cause in the 1970s, the promoters said. But Adams himself chose a
different frame of reference, pointing out that he and his four piece
band were the first to put on a live rock concert since James Brown
bared his risqué soul in Saigon way back when.
The
concert came hot on the heels of Ho Chi Minh’s second international
marathon, with the same people promoting both shows. As an act to follow
Hope, Brown and a marathon, Adams was the perfect choice.
His
wholesome, anthemic rock and his high-octane sentimental ballads – like
the syrupy tear jerkin’ hit ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It For You’ –
provided the perfect kind of fun for guys and gals who’d just run 42
kilometres and needed middle of the road dance-and-romance of the same
epic overblown proportions to come down to.
It
was no accident that this clean, green, eco-friendly rock star was
allowed to be first to bring live rock back, back in the SRV – the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam to the un-initiated. His group were on an
Aslan tour capitalising on the marathon sales of his latest album So Far
So Good. He requested to play Vietnam but first he had to be thoroughly
vetted. “The government screened my records, videos, press statements,
everything I have done,” Adams told Hot Press after the show.
Adams’
espousal of green issues seemed strangely lost on the Ho Chi Minh
crowds, who have recently woken up from their socialist hibernation and
embraced capitalism with all the zeal of born-again converts.
“There’s
so few cars here, it’s amazing. No cars that’s great, that’s
fantastic,” he told the audience who looked more embarrassed than
heartened at the observation.
Adams, who has a
reputation for putting on powerful, energetic live shows, said
afterwards that he’d felt a bit intimidated by being the first kid to
rock again in Vietnam and so “held back” on stage, afraid that if he
really let it rip, things might get out of hand.
“I
didn’t want it to get too wild. I didn’t know how the police would
react. You have so much control but why cause panic?” he said, before
adding, “The next time, man.”
With tickets
selling for up to 35 US dollars, there were few real kids in the 2,500
strong audience, almost half of which comprised westerners.
And,
although there were people dancing in the aisles much to the discomfort
of the electric-prod waving police, the local crowd needed some
prompting on the mores of rock concerts from their foreign counterparts.
When
the band walked off stage, a group of Vietnamese girls asked a
screaming Canadian fan if Adams would come back. “Yes. But you have to
make noise first,” the frustrated fan said. The Canadian fan then jumped
on stage to rouse the relatively silent house.
The
girls up front, however, knew all the basic moves: everytime Adams came
within reach, his legs were fondled by dozens of outstretched hands.
Backstage,
the singer said he enjoyed playing Vietnam but he was a bit
apprehensive about re-injecting rock and roll into the mainstream of
this “innocent” society. “You bring pop culture to a country where the
average annual income is 120 US dollars. How do they afford it?” he
asked after the show.
The city has a charm and
innocence that comes from living in a time warp, he observed. “I’m not
sure if what we have done, however, tonight is a good thing. I would
hate to see this city turn into Bangkok. That would be a terrible
shame,” he said. Despite his observations, however, he admitted that his
agents were making “tentative” arrangements for another concert.
Adams
refused to be drawn on political issues and replied to a US reporter’s
questions about Washington’s ongoing economic embargo by saying: “That’s
your problem, man.”
The girls up front were
clearly unconcerned about embargoes and had no qualms about live rock
and roll staging a come-back. Screams like a chorus of cats in heat
erupted when Adams sang: “I don’t want to argue, I don’t want to fight, I
don’t want to talk politics all through the night, all I want is you.”
Clutching
a plectrum the singer had thrown from the stage like a precious stone,
one 19 year old said: “I’m very happy. This is the first time the
foreigner singer come to Vietnam so everybody in Vietnam likes to shake
hands with the foreigner.”
Adams closed the
set with ‘The Summer of ‘69’ featuring what he has described as his
“best lyric” to date: “I got my first real six string, bought it at a
five and dime, played it till my fingers bled, it was the summer of
‘69.”
If the Vietnamese – who would have faced
more serious threats to their well-being than guitar strings – had more
gory memories of the summer of ‘69, they weren’t letting them spoil the
show. •
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