Lightning in a Bottle 2024 was a massive success this year. The weather was kind, the musical acts were bumping, and the attendees had much reason to celebrate. Every Memorial Day, Lake Buena Vista outside of Bakersfield in Southern California turns into a 5 day romp in the desert. This year festival guests had comfortable warm days, and gentle cool nights, making the music and arts event a bastion of paradise in a world that desperately needs it. The headliners included Fat Boy Slim, MIA, Honey Dijon, Labrinth, Lane 8, Skrillex and Skream, (wIth a surprise Junkyard set by Rufus du Sol).
The festival is set up so that main Lightning and Thunder stages are at opposite ends of the festival grounds to the dance yard: affectionately known as ‘the Woogie’. On the walk between the two areas, you’ll find yoga tents, learning kitchens, art galleries, cacao ceremonies, food markets, and a plethora of stages playing a variety of music from lesser known musicians. It is very common to hear a groovy sound while walking and stay a while. Whether it’s at a neon martian circus, a pioneer western village, the womping stacked dubstep stage, or a play area designed for kids, this festival has something for everyone.
The food at the festival offers a variety of healthy and delicious options. If you arrive on Wednesday, often times, you can get a free sample to help build the buzz around the good food. This year, ‘Cafe Connection’ stood out as a healthy way to consume sweet potatoes, cucumber, purple cabbage, rice, avocado and egg. Another stand out was the Yakisoba noodles at a place called ‘Noods’, which offered seared Ahi tuna over a bowl of soba and greens with a working of toppings and sauces. There was pizza, fried chicken, ramen, and so much more. So if you didn’t bring food of your own, you would be just fine.
There are several ways to do Lightning in a Bottle. But because the nearest hotels and AirBnbs are a 30+ minute drive, most people camp; and within that realm there are many options. You can bring in an RV that hooks up along lake front sites. You can book an 80×80 group site and hang with up to 30 buds in the grass along side the lake. The festival also offers turn-key sites that are already set up for you. And if you don’t have a big group, they have a car camping lot where many people choose to save money.
The big three concerns with these festivals can often be: bathrooms, water access, and sleep. Lucky for attendees the porto-potty crews worked every morning to clean out and replace the units so that they were tenable for use. There was only one egregious mishap that caught my attention, and the culprit has not yet been found… but suffice it to say, someone missed the seat in three adjacent stalls. The horror!
Additionally, there were water stations all over the camping areas and throughout the festival. It was always easy refill water bottles. And it was very nice that this year, security guards at the entrances did not make festival attendees dump their camelbaks or water bottles before going in. Lightning in a Bottle preaches sustainability, and this practice of allowing people to bring in water is an great example LiB walking the walk! I will say however, that for all the aesthetic beauty that is put into the festival, the water stations could be made a little more noticeable at night. Sometimes they get tricky to find. The agony!
Lastly, Sleep. Now, I can’t speak for everyone, but I slept like a baby each night. This is remarkable because 1: it was a full Moon, and 2: you never know if you’re going to get set up next to some jabroni who wants to DJ his favorite dubstep songs throughout the night. Our camping area only really had noisy neighbors on Saturday night (which is to be expected). And lucky for us they were playing bouncy pop house music, so it wasn’t as bad as I’ve faced before. That being said, I can’t account for the whole festival and I’m sure someone, somewhere was blasting dubstep at 5AM without the awareness of how they were affecting others. Oy vey!
The yoga and workshops offered at Lightning in a Bottle were top notch. There were morning sound baths were complete with full gong orchestras, didgeridoos, flutes, chimes, and sound bowls. The programming and classes included every type of Yoga under the sun, Qi Gong energy work, as well as guided meditation and breath work. You could learn to make your own elixirs, draw a live figure before your eyes, or attend a lecture from prominent thought leaders in the psychedelic and drug harm reduction communities. And I haven’t even gotten started on the music!
Lightning in a Bottle offers a progressive bent toward genre which includes house, dubstep, bluegrass, dream pop, and transcendental jazz (to name a few). Moving from stage to stage can feel like quantum jumping as the vibrations can differ so greatly from one zone to the next. For the music lover, this is a dream come true. Because if you want to sit on a blanket in the shade and feel the sunshine through the breezy trees to a mandolin and banjo, you can. And if you want bass music in your face until it drowns everything else out (including your sorrows), you also can.
Some musical highlights this year included Fat Boy Slim, Ayla Nereo, and MIA. Now, music is subjective, and Lightning in a Bottle is a massive festival, so no two people have the same experience; So when I talk about this, I am talking about my personal favorites.
Fat Boy Slim is one of the original gangsters of electronic music. If you were born in the sometime after 1981, it is likely that he was your first sampling of dance music in the mainstream. He has got something newer producers simply do not have: time and experience. Fat Boy Slim has been around a real long time, and he knows how to spin a party. His performance on Friday night had people jumping off tables and wiggling them hips.
Ayla Nereo was given two time slots at the festival, and has a divine Goddess energy to her. She danced and sang, very pregnant mind you, with her cohort of impossibly beautiful back up dancers and support musicians. Her personally written lyrics are about breathing in the gift of life, letting go of things that don’t serve, and cherishing love. Her handsome life-partner is also the father to her unborn baby. He stood at her side DJing her music at a cheery golden hour, with children playing with balloons, and circus performers interspersed in the crowd. She took a moment to reflect on this, her last performance before she enters the third trimester of her gestation, and her upcoming commitment to Motherhood. There was not a dry eye on the field.
And then there is MIA. I was honestly surprised talking with festival attendees about my excitement for her performance. Some of the responses I would get back included, “Isn’t she a one hit wonder?” “Oh I don’t like gangster rap music, but have fun.” and “Who?”
Most people aren’t aware the she was in a long term relationship with Diplo from 2003-2008. And was instrumental in the founding of his Jamaican roots driven project Major Lazer. Her one hour performance included several outfit changes, monologues with the crowd about her political stances on free speech, and the right to privacy. (For some context she is a native Sri Lankan who was displaced during their civil war, and was a refugee in London as a pre-teen.) Her music is irreverent to the establishment and her lyrics makes blunt statements set to samples from The Pixies like, “Do you know the cost of AKs in Africa? 20 dollars ain’t sh** to you, but that’s how much they are.” She is a true artist in that she turns the music on her listener and challenges them to be better than they are.
In a world of music, where everyone is copying everyone, MIA took a moment with her most famous hit “Paper Planes” to demonstrate that the industry has been ripping off her seminal sounds for years. She seamlessly wove in pop hits by Post Malone, Taylor Swift, and Lorde to show that she got there first (and received little to no credit for doing so). In my mind, art is what you can get away with. It’s using the creative process to subvert the establishment and get your observers to question reality and think for themselves. She completely blew our minds, and I would not have missed her for any other show.
And obviously, there is too much good music to fit everything in this article. The ambient gorgeous progressive live instruments of Tycho, the floating psychedelic guitar riffs and moans of Glass Beams, the beautiful cries and gospel of Labrinth. It was all so good. Not to mention the surprise DJ set at the Junkyard by Rufus Du Sol. Which left every other corner of the festival empty. Rufus turned out a 2-hour party at the lakeside stage, full of elements and motifs you might find at the dump. It was crammed with smiling people, flapping fans, spritzing misters, and a golden Sunday sunset. Life at LiB is good.
Lightning in a Bottle has been described by Burners (people who attend Burning Man), as a kind of Burning Man Light. It’s child friendly, has access to delicious food, clean water, and world class programming. But instead of throwing people into a hell-cape, it offers a paradise. Where logistics can be a pain, LiB is an easy two hour drive from a major international airport. And to go for five days, gives just enough of a separation from the norm to allow it’s attendees to be changed and bring back new perspective to the real world.
To paraphrase a conversation with festival founder:
“It’s a place where people can get squirrelly.”
Dede Flemming
And we certainly did just that. (Just watch out for the ground squirrels and their divots, because they are the one’s who really run the show.)
TikTok
The Indy Review 