Seattle Subsonic

Atmosphere: All the Ugly People Be Quiet!

April 26th, 2009

And as such, not a single person at Showbox Sodo was quiet Friday night for the Atmosphere show. The only reason I heard of this hip-hop group was purely by happenstance. I was pursing a copy of The Stranger sitting at the bar at Mulleady’s, my local watering hole, and I saw an advertisement for the Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco this August. I struck up a conversation with my neighbor, talking about which bands we’d like to see there, and she told me that since Atmosphere is scheduled to play, she is definitely going to the festival. That stuck in my mind, and when I had the opportunity to check them out for Subsonic, I jumped at the chance!
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It was quite the scene arriving at the Showbox Sodo, as there were dozens of people out front begging for tickets.  I felt a little bad knowing absolutely nothing about this group when there were so many people wanting to get in, but hey, I was on a mission and had a job to do!  My date and I had just enough time to get a beer and chat for a little bit before Atmosphere took the stage, and from the reaction of the crowd, you could tell that this is a hip hop group that definitely gives their fans what they want.

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As I mentioned, I knew absolutely nothing about this group before this show, but that didn’t really seem to matter, as frontman Sean Daley (aka Slug) made it easy to groove to the music and connected well with the crowd.  Something I look for in  any show I go to is band interaction with the crowd.  It’s one thing to be  a good musician and artist, but another thing entirely to be a good performer.  If all I wanted to do was hear the music, that’s what radios and CDs are for.  To banter with the crowd and make it known that their presence is appreciated, that takes something special.  Slug was great, giving the obligatory shout-outs to ‘Sea-Town’, getting everybody’s hands in the air, and really encouraging everybody to have a good time.  He encouraged everyone in the crowd to make friends with everyone to their left and right, front and back.  The entire crowd is one big community, so take care of each other!
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Two to three songs in, Slug made the comment that this was the ugliest crowd he had ever seen, which really got the audience excited, before segwaying into the title track from their 2002 release, “God Loves Ugly”.  I must say I’ve never heard a frontman describe their audience that way, and I’ve never heard a crowd erupt into screams when he says ‘all the ugly people be quiet!’.  It just takes a certain kind of performance to pull that off.
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I don’t know that I’ll be making the trip to Outside Lands this year, but when Atmosphere makes another trip back to ‘Sea-Town’, I think I’ll make an effort to check them out again.  A show that grabs your attention like this is something special.