By Charley Chiasson, Founder & Principal, Train.Sell.Win.
I was at the RBC Amphitheatre in Toronto on Wednesday night. GODSMACK, with Stone Temple Pilots and Dorothy opening. Waterfront, summer air, the kind of night that reminds you why live music exists.
I went there for one reason — a night out with a friend. An escape. No agenda, no work, just music.
Then Sully Erna walked on stage.
At some point during the show, he addressed it directly. Unprompted. He looked out at thousands of people and said that AI will never replace the emotion, the energy, the feeling of a live music event.
The crowd roared.
And something shifted for me. I wasn’t thinking about work, about AI, about anything. For the rest of the evening I was just there — present, in the moment, surrounded by real people having a real experience. No technology. No notes. Nothing but the night.
That’s when this article wrote itself.
The Man Who Played Everything
Sully Erna, the front man and leader of Godsmack, didn’t just front the show. He was the show.
Guitar. Piano. Drums. He moved between instruments the way a great salesperson moves through a conversation — reading the room, shifting gears, never losing the thread. Thirty-one years into a career that has crossed generations, the man still plays like he has something to prove. Not to the critics. To the room.
And the room gave it back.
That’s the thing about a band that’s been around 31 years. They don’t just have fans. They have families. Parents who grew up with the music brought their kids — some as young as three years old — to the show that night. You could feel it in the crowd. Multiple generations standing together, connected by something none of them could fully explain and none of them needed to.
At one point, Sully brought about eight kids up on stage. Young kids. He looked out at the crowd and said, simply, that these are the musicians of the future.
The place erupted.
Not because it was scripted. Because it was real.
The Kid in Front of Me
There was a boy standing near me. About ten years old. Blind.
He couldn’t see the lights, the stage, the crowd around him. He didn’t need to. He felt every note. His head rocked back and forth, completely lost in it, completely present. And without anyone making anything of it, people around him naturally reached out — hi-fiving him, his mother helping along the way, making sure he was part of every moment. Nobody announced it. It just happened. Strangers, connected by the same music, making sure that kid felt every bit of it.
I watched him for a while and thought: this is what music is actually for.
Not the production. Not the setlist. Not the algorithm that recommended the show based on his listening history.
The experience. The unfiltered, physical, emotional, unrepeatable experience of being in a room where something real is happening.
No AI in the world can give that boy what he had in that moment.
Imperfectly Perfect
Towards the end of the show, Sully sat down at the piano.
The energy shifted. He talked about music icons — friends — who had passed too early. Lives lost to mental health. He wasn’t performing anymore. He was just a man at a piano, speaking honestly to thousands of people about something that matters.
Then a QR code flashed on the stage. His foundation. scarsfoundation.org.
He wasn’t asking for anything. He was offering help to those who need it. No pitch, no pressure. Just a moment, a code, and a room full of people paying attention.
The tagline of the foundation is Imperfectly Perfect. The idea that our imperfections are exactly what makes us human. What makes us real.
I never thought I would walk away from a Godsmack concert carrying that.
But that’s what happens when you’re in the room.
What This Has to Do with Your Business
What are you giving up when you replace the room with an algorithm?
AI is here. I use it. Most of us do. I’m currently using it to develop an AI-based Learning Management System to help salespeople become better — not replace them. That’s the point. Leverage it where it makes sense for you.
The whole night was magic. And no algorithm is ever going to touch that.
Charley Chiasson is the Founder and Principal of Train.Sell.Win., a Toronto-based B2B sales performance consultancy helping organizations build trusted advisors — not just quota carriers.