This post is the English version of one I wrote on the Japanese blogging platform “note” First off, Bayside Jenny was a medium-to-large-sized club and live house. As others have mentioned online, the acoustics there were simply excellent. The opening acts were: Even though they were billed as opening acts, their role was really just to adjust the PA and warm up the sound system. They were made to spin their sets at such a low volume that it was almost pitiful, and there weren’t many people dancing. There was a sofa on stage big enough to lie down on, and Richard D. James was sprawled out on it, just fiddling with his laptop—a truly surreal scene. I read in a post-show interview that it was apparently a laptop he’d built himself. The first song was “Pulsewidth.” Just that hi-hat sound alone sent the venue into a storm of cheers. By this point, Richard had completely taken control of the atmosphere, so he didn’t even need to hype the crowd up—he just silently fiddled with his laptop. He never once looked out at the audience the entire time. Anyway, in “Pulsewidth,” the four-on-the-floor kick drum kicks in partway through the intro, On the recording, the kick drum is pretty weak—it has none of the impact you’d expect from a standard club-style techno kick designed to get people dancing—but hearing it live, the sound was deep like nothing I’d ever experienced before, and the sound pressure far exceeded the audience’s expectations. The crowd wasn’t even in a state of thinking anymore; it was more instinctive, like their bodies were reacting on their own. In that instant, the entire packed venue—which held about 2,000 people—literally shook explosively. At one point, several large, colorful rubber balloons—about 2 meters in size—were thrown into the venue, and everyone had fun hitting them and moving them around. The Osaka show was so explosively energetic that, in Quick Japan vol. 13 (Ohta Publishing), released on April 25, 1997, Richard D. James described the January 30, 1997, concert at Osaka Bayside Jenny as “the second-best of my life.” Ever since I was a kid in my teens, I’ve been faking my age to work as a roadie at concerts and live shows, so I’ve seen over 100 live performances by various artists, but Aphex Twin’s shows are by far my number one. It’s on a whole other level. On the flip side, the ones that made me think, “Give me my money back!” were Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Lenny Kravitz, and the Sex Pistols (during their reunion)… though there are more. It wasn’t just bad—it felt like watching a classical concert. I even walked out halfway through the Sex Pistols show, lol.