This post is the English version of one I wrote on the Japanese blogging platform “note”
◉About Osaka Bayside Jenny
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.
Since it was a club and live house converted from a waterfront warehouse, the ceilings were incredibly high. Even though it was a two-story structure, the acoustics were really top-notch.
Some articles (like the one from Tower Records) list the capacity as 1,200 people, but they’re forgetting that it was a two-story building… Everyone’s memory is just too fuzzy.
There are tons of people online saying “Bayside Jenny was in Nanko,” but Bayside Jenny was actually on the opposite side, closer to Chikko.
It easily held 1,800 people, and if packed to the brim, it had a capacity of about 2,000.
◉Live performance (opening act)
The opening acts were:
DJ: Grant
LIVE: CYLOB
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.
◉The Arrival of Aphex Twin
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.”
It’s not a particularly intense track on the recording, but the moment the hi-hat and intro pads kicked in, I thought, “Huh?” The rich timbre and range were on a completely different level from what I’d heard on the recording, so the audience seemed taken aback.
It was a sound I couldn’t have imagined from the recording at all—it made me wonder if he’d composed it with such meticulous calculation, or rather, if he’d been so particular about every single note.
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.
Richard knew full well that “Pulsewidth”—a song that sounds weak on the recording—could really blow the roof off, and he deliberately chose it as the opening track.
With just a few notes, he pulled us completely into his world, and from there on out, it was his show all the way. It was like another dimension.
He’s a genius on the recording, but when you hear him live, every single note is genius.
It felt like I was being shown “genius” in the most vivid way possible.
It was almost violent.
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.
It was an insane sight.
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.
Then, a few of those bear costumes from the Donkey Rhubarb music video appeared in the venue, doing weird dances and getting the crowd hyped. After that, they went up on stage and danced.
The crowd was going absolutely wild, but Richard never once looked out at the audience until the very end.
◉Actually, the legendary Osaka concert
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.”
◉Note
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.
Second place goes to Jeff Beck, third to Metallica, and from fourth on down, it’s kind of in no particular order. If I had to include others, it would definitely be S.O.B., the origin of my musical roots, and Napalm Death. Daisy Chainsaw was also pretty intense. I’ve seen Jeff Mills a total of four times, and needless to say, he’s amazing.
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.
I’ve condensed and polished the details of Aphex Twin’s first tour in Japan and compiled them on GitHub: Aphex Twin Japan Tour 1997: Rediscovering the “Lost” Schedule after 29 Years
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