The Limelight is quite cavernous itself. It's a huge, old stone cathedral that's been converted into a dance club. Bands and DJs now play where a preacher once stood, inside an echo-filled, gothic hall. A big bar is at the rear. Metal scaffolding has been placed in front of the stained glass windows, so that now there are double balconies surrounding the hall. There is a maze of narrow hallways leading away from the big room, and they have been painted whimsically. The hallway leading to the restrooms has been painted with hellish flames; another with Grey aliens. There are a couple smaller rooms, where DJs spin and people dance or chill out. In another room, they sell metal-studded leather items, t-shirts and jewelry. Every time I've gone to Limelight, the place has been packed, with the floor a writhing mass, the balconies lined, the bars two- and three-people deep.

This particular night was no exception. There was a drag queen at the door with a bright silver wig, turning people away. Strangely, when I walked up, she let me right in. I didn't look particularly outrageous or fashionable, but there was a music convention in town, and I guess I looked like I was part of it. I was wearing a 2600 shirt, which has a circuit chart on the front, so maybe I looked like some kind of recording engineer or something. My delight was doubled when I only had to pay $10 -- $5 off for conventioneers -- even though I didn't have one of those conspicuous badges that a lot of people were wearing.

Inside, the scene was like New York itself -- loud, crowded and visually overwelming (Not ulike the field of digital media also). I went upstairs to one of the balconies overlooking the stage. Banco de Gaia was onstage, consisting of one baseball-capped guy in the middle of no less than 40 keyboards. It wasn't much to look at, except for the wild light show the Limelight always has. The music was pretty standard techno, and the DJ kept changing the synthesized and sampled sounds gradually, creating a swirling flow of sound.

Down on the floor, the crowd was moving rather unenthusiastically. I spotted Nick West, in his telltale black t-shirt. This one had a white longhorn cowhead on the front. He was standing with Jaime and Brent, leaning against a big podium, looking bored.

After Banco de Gaia finished, I made my way down to them, just in time to see Eat Static come onstage. They were a little more visual -- two guys with long black hair, manipulating keyboards and other gear. True to their name, they produced a lot of static, feedback, metallic sounds, and infinite echo, all synced to techno beats. Jaime and Brent hated it, and Nick soon left. I was indifferent, and I didn't really feel like dancing. Most of the music industry people there seemed to feel the same way, for only the most energetic, drugged, or young people were dancing.

After Eat Static stopped their barrage, I made my way to the restroom. At one point I was trying to pass through a bottleneck of people in one of those narrow hallways. Caught in a standstill, suddenly a petit, attractive, bespectacled, biker-jacketed and obviously hurried young woman pushed her way through the jam of people and up to where I was. Trying to get around me, she said curtly, "Excuse me... EXCUSE ME. You're cute, but you're in my way." I moved aside to the extent that I could, and she pushed past. Her comment seemed to me a distinctively New York-style pick up line.

In the hallway lined with flames, there was a burly guy muttering "X, X, X..." as people walked by. I stopped to talk to him for a minute, curious because I had never seen, much less done, "X," or Ecstasy. He showed me "moons" and "half-moons" -- pills actually shaped like what they're named for, and fairly large. A half-moon, he said, would set you back 20 bucks.

Aphex Twin didn't come on until after a long, long intermission. The announcer said he (Aphex Twin is one guy, Richard James) had just got off the plane from the UK, and it was near two in the morning. Then began the most awful noise I had ever heard in a dance club. The beautiful ambient sound I had heard on CD was not to be found here. The Aphex Twin seemed to be singlehandedly exacting revenge upon America for its revolt against the British, by blasting the most tortured, revolting techno music ever heard. Metallic scraping noises, unforgivable beats, and everything turned up way too loud. After it was clear that this was going to be anything but ambient, I soon left.