Ha! A $100 synth from RadioShack is precisely what I use. It even has "RadioShack" engraved into it.
Honestly I was just trying to find some good things to say about Overtone, since creativity is always a great thing and should be encouraged.
Maybe a combination of the two ideas: Overtone functions being invoked by pressing keys on a synth, with pressure/speed of the keypress being passed as function args. (But then I suppose Overtone would be "just another synth generator"... I don't know.)
By contrast, I have the impression that livecoding requires a great deal more knowledge to do in an entertaining way, and it can go wrong in many more ways.