Atom And His Package
Monday March 27th @ some kid’s house in Buffalo

This is definitely one of the stranger shows I’ve been to. It was held at a house in Buffalo where some college kids live, and although it’s kind of cool and DIY, it’s really a pretty crappy “venue”, if you want to call it that. The show was in the basement, and the ceiling was like probably a little more than 6 feet high in most places. (Damnit, I’m Canadian and I don’t even know what that is using the metric system.. I’m so ashamed) No one except the kids in the front row could see anything. Not that there was much to see anyways.

I really like Atom’s music, I think it’s cool that he’s doing something different and he’s a pretty amusing character. But his live show definitely leaves something to be desired. First of all, for the most part all he does is press a button on his keyboard and sing over top of it. That’s not all that exciting. To make matters worse, he has to wait in between every song while the sequencer “executes”, meaning he has to come up with clever banter in between every song. The clever banter mostly consisted of inside jokes that I didn’t seem to be in on. Everyone else in the place thought Atom was hilarious, but I was just itching to hear more music. Then when he attempted a couple new covers and screwed them up and stopped in the middle of the song, that just added to the chaos.

When the set finally came to an end, it seemed like it had been really short, although Atom had been up there for well over an hour. With all the talking and waiting in between songs, he had only played maybe 10 songs in total. At least he played his cover of the Dead Milkmen, cause that kicked ass.

All in all, it was an interesting experience, but it will not go down in my books as one of the more rockin shows I have been to. — Sean