For two hours Wednesday night in Roanoke, it was like the 1980s never went away.

Onstage at Jefferson Center's Shaftman Hall stood Canadian rocker Bryan Adams, looking and sounding like a perfectly preserved specimen of that era in music video and mainstream pop-rock history. It was exactly what the sold-out crowd of 924 wanted.

Before Adams even opened his mouth, the audience was giving him a standing ovation. It was the first of nine standing O's, an excessive number even by Roanoke standards.

Adams ate it up during a set that was one minute shy of two hours, with a four-song encore. And save for a couple of songs from his recent album, "11," he gave the crowd what it came for -- a steady dose of chart toppers, from set opener "Run To You" to encore closer "All For Love."

He performed primarily solo, accompanying himself solidly on acoustic guitar, with pianist Gary Bright joining him for a few tunes. Adams' sandpaper tenor was just as strong and flexible as it had been on all those hit records. He had a sense of humor to match.

After he sang "This Time," a man in the audience shouted: "Your voice is awesome!"

Adams replied, deadpan: "Whiskey and cigarettes."

He made note of all the time that has passed since he started touring, saying it "didn't sound right" to say that he was playing songs from throughout his 30-year career. Later, after his guitar went out of tune during "Can't Stop This Thing We Started," he told the audience that it was made in 1946.

"It's almost as old as me," he said to laughter. That's not quite true. Adams is 49.

A woman in the audience shouted, "You're still hot!"

Adams told the crowd about the early 1980s, before he was a household name, touring the United States and taking any gig he could get -- sometimes two a day.

Years later, when he was checking into a hotel, a man in the lobby eyed him and asked if he was Bryan Adams. "I saw you open for Journey, man," the stranger told him. Adams dedicated his first hit, "Cuts Like a Knife," to "that guy."

That tune, like so many others this night, was a major crowd singalong. Adams knew when to drop out and let the crowd carry those hook lines.

And the crowd didn't let him down.