Lightning in a Bottle was fantastic.
Kaytranada, Machinedrum, Bassnectar, Troyboi, Stephan Jacobs vs ill.Gates were the standouts. Ivy Lab was very outside the box, extremely left field and challenging, I described them in the moment as difficult and awesome. Big Wild was my favourite, he made me tremendously happy, his set was basically perfect. The only flaw with it all was that it was over too soon. Fastest fucking week of our lives. Some of the scheduling was tough with acts on at times that were impossible for us so sadly we missed KMLN, Filastine, Naughty Princess, El Papa Chango and Headphone Activist.
Also the late night offerings were confusingly poor. We trudged around helplessly for hours trying unsuccessfully to find a decent afterparty to take us to dawn while everything descended inexorably into house music. The house music was omnipresent and inescapable. At one point we traveled clear across festival grounds to escape bad house music only to be confronted with more bad house music. The inescapability approached comical if it all wasn’t so actually awful.
But this isn’t meant to be some kind of diatribe against house music, it’s a diatribe against bad music. If it’s repetitive, forgettable, lifeless and boring, I’m not going to like it, I don’t care what genre of music it is. I’m starting to realize something I’ve known all along: what all these festivals is missing is me. Next time ill.Gates and NIGHT NURSE gotta go rogue. Ideally we should play the final hours and close out the show. All’s well that ends well. End on a high note.
We met a handsome hippie hipster and shared our wine with him, exchanging jokes and quips in the dark until the warm brightness of morning. Our new friend was one of Dylan’s fans and spoke knowledgeably about Dylan’s Billie Holiday song. He then talked fondly of his mother who was a nurse, I said it’d be fucking rad to have a goddamn mother who was a fucking nurse. “It’s awesome,” our new friend said. “She is amazing, really good, hardworking, loving, and with a smile that could melt an iceberg.” “Well we know now who to blame for global warming,” I said. “Wipe that smile off your face, woman. Snow, damn it, we need snow!”
