System of A down for my nephew

So yesterday was a fun, wet, muddy experience as I took my 12-year-old nephew to his first concert.

He loves System Of A Down, and for all y'all who don't know, he couldn't have picked a more musically complex, politically conscious and just plain fun sing-along band to fall in love with. System Of A Down are four Armenian-American psychos who started out artsy and nuts, and by their third album, dumbed their music down a bit, but have gotten hundreds of thousands of teens to sing along to anti-war and anti-Bush administration-themed songs.

This show was @Parc Jean Drapeau, Montreal and I feared the worst as it rained off and on all day. But lo and behold the heavens held their tears for the first -and in my opinion boring, monotonous bands: Bad Acid Trip, Unearth, Hatebreed and Avenged Sevenfold. Actually, Unearth was the only entertaining one out of the bunch.

I must admit 50% of my joy from metal shows are the stares and hushed whispers. Not only am I a big thick black man, I'm a big thick black man with ninjaboots on, a headwrap, billowing shalwar( Pakistani pants) and huge metal rings on with a Mars Volta wristband and a Metallica Master Of Puppets T shirt.

The fact that I was dragging my nephew around in the mud just added to the spectacle.
I got a lot of 'Is that your kid?' smiles and thumbs up as I piggy backed him for most of the System set. And he ain't a scrawny little tyke. It wasn't as bad as i thought it would be as I carried most of his weight with my butt. Even in the mosh it, where there was nothing but love-people watching out and making sure we weren't getting crushed. Headbanging and singing along with hundreds of sweaty, muddy french kids-oh yeah, it started pouring during their set- was just awesome.

After that I took my boy home and played him all types of stuff. He needs to know about Deftones, Meshuggah, Living Colour, Tool, Fishbone, y'know, the good stuff.

S'important to pass the essentials on to the next generation...