Last night I attended the System Of A Down sideshow at the Sydney Entertainment Centre.

The show was absolutely amazing and the fact it was getting recorded for a live album seemed to make the guys really bring their A game. The teenager inside me loved every second, as they belted out a 27 song set across an hour and a half. And I think I forgot how good of a vocalist Serj Tankian is – totally on-key, powerful, and distinctive! 

But for as good and memorable as the show was, the most satisfactory part of the night came for me in another way -

I was lucky enough to score a couple of freebie tickets to the show, so I hooked my mate up with a spare, knowing that he was a big fan of SOAD. He was totally stoked with the ticket to begin with, then yesterday I received an email from a contact of Serj saying that the man himself would really like to meet us after the show.

I knew my mate would lose his sh*t so I sent him a casual text -

‘Hey dude, feel like meeting Serj after the show? He wants to say hi!’

‘R u serious? I’ll have to bring diapers so I don’t wet myself.’

Later he told me he that after I told him he couldn’t stop thinking about it all day, to the point where he called his girlfriend and was asking her about intelligent topics he should talk about, or questions he could ask.

After the show finished we were escorted backstage and we waited around with the other guests until Serj arrived. We cracked a beer and mingled while Serj worked the room – If someone spat on my friend I don’t think you could have wiped the smile from his face. Eventually Serj worked his way over to us, and we spent around 5 minutes chatting to him – my mate even managed to ask a question about his residency in New Zealand – success!

We all got the obligatory photos and we left Serj to do his thing. We all walked out and agreed that Serj was one of the nicest artists we had ever met, and as we walked back to the car I think I must have heard “unreal” and “legend”, “thanks” about a twenty times each.

I guess for those of us privileged enough to work in music, meeting artists can be ‘a part of the job’ - But for those who don’t, it can be a totally awesome once off experience… And it’s great when we can hook up mates from time to time and provide them with a new Facebook profile pic

Oh and just in case you forgot SOAD rule – time to spin ‘Toxicity’.

Matt M - Making dreams come true since 2012