Issue 4, Article 15: Live
"I was fighting the mold in the bowl with my pee when a thought popped into my brain: If all of us hated high school so much why was nothing ever changed?!" It may not take a rocket scientist to come up with lyrical brilliance like this, but it definitely takes an embittered former Wesleyan neuroscience major to create a 2 1/2 -minute musical lament on the need for a Punk Rock Academy, beginning with these immortal words.
Meet Atom: Adam Goren, Wesleyan class of 1996, spectacled, Jewish, currently bald, wielding an electric guitar, some of the strangest lyrics sheets this side of the Atlantic, and his Package.
Meet the Package: a QY 700 sequencer, which, without getting too technical (Atom doesnt know how it works either) holds about 400 instrument sounds and 40 drum beats in its memory. Gives off an eerie blue glow onstage. Believed by its owner to be male. Doesn’t speak English, but gets fan letters in binary code.
Atom and His Package have played at Wesleyan University three times now, the last show being with metal bands Shadows Fall and Torn Asunder on January 28 at Eclectic. While his out-of-town gigs (he’s from Philadelphia) may have unpredictable turnouts, hes always sure to get an enthusiastic crowd at Wes. "I cant really explain it, but somehow, ‘Happy Birthday Ralph’ changed my life," said Wesleyan student and rabid Atom fan Emma Brooks. He’s still a hot gossip topic around his alma mater. According to sources who wish to remain anonymous, he supposedly won over his girlfriend the night they met by saying, "I’m 21 and I just shit my pants." Romantic. Juicy. While actually attending school here he played guitar in a band called Fracture. His memories of Wesleyan musicology are mostly rather negative. He took Worlds of Music but doesn’t remember who taught it, "but I remember how fucking pissed off I was at Anthony Braxton took a class from Penn, transferred back here, I filled out the paperwork, and I guess he was the head of the music department and like, whatever. I left him like 35 or 40 messages on his
machine to see if things were OK, he never called me back, I was SO MAD." Atom^"s career as is now didn’t really start until his last month on campus, when he purchased his first sequencer.
After two full-length albums, two EPs, and numerous singles and comp contributions, Atom and His Package can finally afford to go on the road. Already they^"ve toured the West Coast, which received them warmly, at least when A&HP were opening for some popular metal bands "I played a show in Berkeley at the Gilman, that was a really fun show. There were like five metal bands and me; I have no idea why I go well with metal." It’s really no mystery - Atom wrote a song about Norwegian black metal, another about
homophobia in metal, and one of his fans’ webpages is fully metal-themed. He is of course also completely punk, and if you don’t believe me, take a listen to his cover of Fugazi^"s "Waiting Room." For some reason, Maximum Rock n’ Roll refuses to list him, but somehow that makes him even more punk rock.
Things are looking golden now for the package and his Atom, as they prepare to take Japan and Europe by storm. But still, Atom is a realist: "I’m certified to teach high school biology and chemistry, so eventually when I need a real job I can do that."