Atomic mass

>> Well, some people like Atom & his Package

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Photo by Jason Felker

These days, Casiocore acts are popping up all over—budgetronic übernerds dropping ironic, adenoidal insights over the finest in Radio Shack instrumentation. But back in the mid-’90s, Philly punker Atom Goren and his “package,” a sequencer, was a true original. Covering Fugazi and the Geto Boys, he was the emo-core scene’s odd man in.
Not that he’s buying the accolades about challenging the parameters of punk and blazing new paths of self-expression. “Uh, it wasn’t that well thought out,” he says. “I didn’t care if it was punk or not—I just thought it was funny.”

Funny, and inspirational. Take the kids in Greensboro, NC, who passed around a set of Rocky-Horror-style audience-participation instructions at an Atom & his Package show—without Atom knowing. The flyer, found on Atom’s Web site, suggested “breaking the chains of routine” by grunting, gesticulating and yelling weird stuff.

“It was awesome. At first I was completely bewildered and very, very confused. For about 15 minutes I had no idea what the hell was going on. But in the end, it was great—it made it about the best show I’d played up to that point.”

Not everyone loves Atom, though. Want a chuckle? Check out the sheer, malevolent animosity in his Hate Mail section, where unfans suggest he should “be murdered by Courtney Love,” or that they “hope something very bad happens to you soon.”

Atom’s reaction? “I guess some people think what I do is really, really stupid, and therefore, they think they should tell me so. The stuff I get is, for the most part, not threatening enough to be scary, but stupid enough to be funny to me and my friends.”

Now, is all this e-hate strictly from metalheads, enraged at his celebration of Rob Halford’s coming out and, conversely, Slayer’s purported homophobia?

“Naw, I get plenty of hate mail that just says, ‘You suck.’” :

With the Frenetics and Say Anything at l’X on Tuesday, April 23, 8pm, $10, all ages