VANCOUVER -- Michael Buble
At GM Place
In Vancouver on Saturday
It's barely been a decade since Michael Buble was working as a lounge singer at Babalu - a tiny downtown Vancouver bar that was destroyed by fire in 2001 and is now an Irish pub. And, like so many aspiring crooners, the Burnaby, B.C. native and son of a fisherman played weddings and corporate events to pay the bills, and appeared in musicals such as the campy 1950s revue, Red Rock Diner.
So when he took the stage for his sold-out show at GM Place - Vancouver's largest concert venue - on Saturday night, he seemed like a guy who had left town in a Pinto and returned in a Ferrari.
"So, how much does this remind you of Babalu?" he quipped, kicking off the evening with a fieryrendition of I'm Your Man and It Had Better Be Tonight (Meglio Stasera).
"But I'm so happy to be here. I had to drive, like, two blocks."
Dressed in a black suit, a white shirt, and a black tie that was pulled jauntily loose around his neck, Buble then launched into a cover-heavy set that ranged from a faithful rendition of Sinatra's I've Got The World On A String to a decidedly un-country take on Willie Nelson's You Were Always On My Mind as the audience - mostly middle-aged couples and bevies of young women - cheered and sang along.
Backed by a full horn section, percussion, guitars, piano and bass, the crooner seemed most at home belting out jazz classics such as the horn-heavy Feeling Good, made famous by the inimitable Nina Simone, the Drifters' Save The Last Dance For Me and the sultry Peggy Lee hit, Fever.
But while the estrogen levels in the stadium rose to precipitous highs as Buble performed several of his soft favourites radio hits, including Lost, which he co-penned with Jann Arden, and the toothache-sweet love song Everything, the material was by far the evening's least compelling.
Still, even Buble poked fun at the tunes, saying "I very badly wanted to be a hockey player. And now I'm singing these wimpy love songs."
And although there was no hiding the fact that his music is geared toward love-minded ladies - at one point, he even jumped into the crowd and gave hugs and kisses to several of his admirers - the heartthrob also made peace with the thousands of boyfriends and husbands in the crowd, acknowledging that many of them probably weren't too thrilled about going to the show. "I'm making my music," he reminded them jokingly before a cover of the sexy hit, Me And Mrs. Jones, "and getting you laid when you get home."
Later, he extended another olive branch to the men, comparing the Vancouver Canucks' season record with that of the Toronto Maple Leafs on a giant screen, then dedicating his monster hit Home to Daniel and Henrik Sedin, Markus Naslund and Roberto Luongo of his hometown team.
After saying his thank yous and goodbyes ("This was a dream come true,"), Buble rounded off the evening with a swinging cover of the Queen hit Crazy Little Thing Called Love and the quiet ballad A Song For You.
As he neared the end of the last tune, he put down his mike and, under his own power, filled the stadium with the lines "I love you for my life, because you're all friends of mine/And when my life is over, I'll remember when we were together/Because we were alone and I was singing my song for you." Then he blew kisses to his fans, bowed, mouthed the words "You rock," and walked offstage, ready to take on the world.
