Fri. May 29 Soma ,San Diego

by Jenny

This was the third SYSTEM OF A DOWN show, and the band was happy in that they were nearing their hometown of LA. There is a great fan base in San Diego, headed by street teamer Josh Hayes (www.geocities.com/sunsetstrip/venue/5447) and his friends, so even prior to the show, we felt the audience welcoming the band. That night they played suite-pee, soil, mind, X, suggestions, know, war, darts. This was a show which typifies the type of growing pains that a band goes through in its stages of infancy in the greater music scene. During the second song of the set, John's kickhead broke---yet the band continued to play, not knowing what had happened. John covered up the problem, proving his incredible talent as a drummer =] When the drum was being fixed, serj spoke to the audience, and kept his cool in the midst of what could have been a bad situation. Meanwhile, because Daron was wearing a t-shirt with a picture of ozzy osbourne's guitarist on it, a fan yelled out to him to play crazy train----and daron played the riff, and the audience cheered him on. shavo thumped on the bass, and yelled out 'slayer' to the crowd, and serj did the 'crowd fucking participation', and started the audience in a chant of 'fuck the system'. When the drum was fixed, the set continued, and the audience response was amazing. This was definitely not the venue to be in for a slayer show---hence, i chickened out again.