Here is my account of the day.

Today was a good day. Not only was I about to witness the awesome live power of the mighty Strapping Young Lad for the second time, but I was also going to meet the guys at a new Metal store in the city. Was I nervous? Hell yeah! Why shouldn't I have been? These guys are my idols and I had never met them before.

I organised to get a lift in with my friend Ross and he drove past my house at about 12pm and we made our way after a quick detour to my friend Mark's house to pick up my "City" CD which I had lent him. He wasn't home so I had to find it myself. After searching all through his garage and in his room inside it was nowhere to be seen and I was getting pissed off! He was supposed to give it to a mate who I was meeting on Thursday to give it back to me but when I met him he said that Mark never gave it to him (which he actually did! Thanks a lot Andrew, I'm gonna get you back for this!!) so I had no "City" to get signed!

We left Mark's and got to the city about half an hour later after driving in an un-airconditioned car in 25-30 degrees celsius heat but when we found a park and exited the car the weather seemed perfect. We then made our way to Metal Mayhem after I stopped at the supermarket to pick up a couple of packets of Gummi Bears for Dev while Ross picked up a copy of "City". When we got to Metal Mayhem there was a small crowd building up and I met up with my mate Ash from the SYL mailing list aswell as a few of his mates, Rowan (bootlegger dude) and Bryce (also from the SYL list). The sign at the door said the guys would be arriving at 3:30 (instead of 2:30) so I guess we had a little longer to wait. I went inside and Ross and I both picked up a copy of "Heavy As A Really Heavy Thing" then went outside and sat with the others.

I saw my mate Donna(tones) who I met at the Sepultura instore last month and went over and chatted with her and her friends for most of the arvo. She had been to the Guttermouth show last week at the Corner where there was a riot and a couple of windows out the front of the venue had been smashed. Inside the window was a poster for the SYL show so she grabbed it and brought it along to get signed. I told her about my Deftones bootleg which I had from the 2nd Melbourne show and being the hardcore Deftones fan that she is she agreed to swap the poster with me for a copy of the tape.

So we sat and talked for a while until the organisers told us all to line up so we formed a queue alongside of the shop. There seemed to be about 400 or so people there about this time and we were all geared up to meet the band and get our goodies signed. 3:30 came and went and I for one was beginning to get restless. One of the guys who was organising it kept coming out and telling us that they were at the airport, they are on the freeway, they are 10 minutes away, and so on. A little after 4:00 a big green Torago van pulled up in front of the store and it was them! They all exited the van and waved to us and I was able to snap up a couple of shots before they entered the store.

I left my bag with Donna's friends who were waiting outside and went in with her and her friend Natalie. I gave Natalie my "Heavy.." booklet to get signed cause she didn't have anything and the guys at the door were saying one item only. Finally we were let in. I gave my tape recorder to Donna and got the whole thing on tape! Which was lucky cause the whole thing was a bit of a blur. I was so excited to be meeting my idols!!

We walked in and straight away I snapped up a few shots of Byron and Jed who were on the far right of the table. I snapped up a couple of shots of Devin too but a few people were crowded around him so I made my way over to Gene Hoglan and gave him my "No Sleep Till Bedtime" booklet to sign. He signed and I said thanks and told how great it was to see them live again. He said "Great!" or something but I could tell that he didn't seem all that thrilled to be there or something. I guess it was just jet lag or something seeing as though they had just flown in from Japan.

Dev and Byron #1
Dev and Byron #2
Dev

As I was standing in front of Gene I saw Donna and Natalie in front of Devin asking him to talk into my tape recorder. I couldn't quite hear what he was saying but it sounded pretty cool. Here is what I could make sense of what he said from the tape:

Donna - And can you please say a few words?
Dev - Well, lets see....
Here's a little riddle, wuddle.
When I was a little twuddle piddle in a puddle and my head was in a muddle.
You can sing it when your sad, you can sing it when your mad.
You can sing it in the shower, come along... (something, something)
When you yell it, when you fight, when you're lying in your bedroom
When your head(?) (something, something) when you see a broken man,
fall.

Anyone make any sense of this?? Hehehehe! Thanks Dev!

To the right of Gene was the new keyboardist Dave but I didn't get him to sign "No Sleep.." cause he didn't play on it so I made my way over to Dev. Here is a little transcription of me meeting Dev which I got from my tape recorder:

Me - Hey Dev!
Dev - Hi, (shakes my hand!) pleased to meet you...
M - Ozz
D - Ozz?
M - Yep, Ozz. I run a website dedicated to you. How are you doing?
D - Hey Ozz, I'm doing alright man.

(At this stage I pull out the Gummi Bears and hand them to him.)

D - LOOK! MORE! Oh my God!! I'm rocking, I'm all positive now! (laughs!)
Fire em open man, lets have some wieners! (?)

I didn't actually have the recorder on me at this stage but this part of the tape is so funny because as you can hear Dev talking in the background, Jed is signing the poster and right after Dev says, "lets have some wieners!" you can hear Jed say:

"Jed, Fucking, Simons!"

And that is exactly what he signed on the poster! After Dev signed my "No Sleep.." book as well as my Ocean Machine book he stopped and posed for a photo with me and was kind enough to wait until the flash went off. Then I made my way over to Byron and Jed and then went back and heard Dev talking to a couple of guys about Ocean Machine. I caught the last bit, some guy asked:

"Are you playing Ocean Machine tonight?"
"Not tonight, we're coming back to play it in February with Strapping and Infinity"

I tried to ask him this for myself but he was already talking to someone else but I caught a bit of that conversation (not sure what the question was but here it is):

"When we were mixing the "City" record, the engineer and I didn't flush the toilet for a week. When we finally flushed it, it just blew up the system!"

After he finished talking to the guy I spoke to him:

Me - Dev...
Dev - Yes?
M - Are you playing Ocean Machine tonight?
D - Not until February.
M - You're not playing any tonight?
D - Nope not tonight, we're gonna do just Strapping...
M - Oh, that's cool...
D - We didn't have enough time to put it together. We're gonna do Ocean Machine and Infinity too in February.
M - Infinity too! Cool! I heard a track, Bad Devil. It rocks, yeah!
D - Just wait till you hear the whole record!
M - Yeah, sweet!

Donna was too shy or something to ask Dev for a photo so I asked Nik (the owner of the store) if we could walk around and get a photo and he said yeah so we went around behind Dev and I tapped him on the shoulder and then we both posed for a photo with him while Natalie took it and then Donna gave Dev his Gummi Bears to which he said:

Dev - More!! Yessss! Thank you very much man... uhh, woman!! (laughs) Hehehe, sorry.... you can't really call people man....
Someone behind him - At what stage did you say you liked these?
Dev - I don't know but it must have been a good day because look at that... (holds up about 5 packets of Gummi Bears)

Gene, Dave, Dev and Byron

We were then about to leave but Donna hadn't got anything signed for herself (she was giving the poster to me) so I went up to Dev and handed him a piece of paper to write a message on it for Donna and I said "Yeah, for the Gummi Bear girl"

Dev and his Gummi artwork #1
Dev and his Gummi artwork #2

He then started to draw a big Gummi Bear and then signed it and handed it back to us. We said thanks and "See you tonight!" and Donna walked out but I had a few shots left so I stayed in for another minute and snapped up a shot of Dev and then Jed giving the sign of the cow and then walked out. By this time Ross had already been in and left so I ended up walking to the station with Donna and her mate and caught the train home anxiously awaiting the gig later on that night!

Ash Loh-Smith has posted up some photos which he took at the instore. Go here to see them.

GO HERE FOR THE LIVE REVIEW AND PHOTOS

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