Levitation Austin 2024 – Day Four

We decided to end Levitation 2024 with a lot of metal.

My girlfriend slept and relaxed during the day, while I went to End of an Ear Records (where Drop Nineteens were doing a signing) and scored some fun CD compilations of everything from Italian late 1970s disco to classic British punk.

We were famished by late afternoon, and I realized that my girlfriend hadn’t yet experienced Stubb’s for their food, so it was an easy decision to go there. She fell in love with their Serrano cheese spinach.

I was surprised that the show that night, featuring Gran Moreno, The Well, Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol, Pentagram, and The Sword, didn’t sell out right away – especially since it included The Sword reunion set. Lo and behold, it did sell out before day four arrived and the crowd was massive.

There’s about another third of this crowd behind us in this photograph. The turnout was wild. I hadn’t been around that many metal fans since probably Psycho Las Vegas in 2020. The line to buy The Sword’s merch was over an hour long for some people, and people were dropping money like mad. Metal fans always bring cash to spend.

We missed the first part of Gran Moreno’s set, but what we heard was a lot of heavy Latino garage rock from the duo. Up next were local doom darlings The Well, who crushed it as always and teased their upcoming album with “Christmas Lights.” The night crept in during their set, which was appropriate for their material.

The Well casting a Darkness 150′ radius spell.

Up next were another Austin trio, Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol, or, as I saw them listed on a fan’s shirt, “Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Whatever the Fuck.” The mosh pit for their show of what I call “goofy metal” (I mean, they have a song called “Peanut Butter Snack Stix,” after all – which they played.) was insane. Their drummer is impressive, laying down thunderous stuff. They also teased new material coming soon.

Metal legends Pentagram showed they still have chops and commanded the stage with wizard-like power. The gray hair and beards only seemed to be lightning erupting from their bodies.

The crowd was at full capacity by the time The Sword hit the stage, and everyone was singing / yelling “Barael’s Blade” with them for the opener. “Cloak of Feathers” was a welcome addition, as was “The Hidden Masters.” Crowd surfers were abundant and everyone was going bonkers for most of their set.

It was a heroic return for them, as big as some of the epic tales they spin on their albums. “I didn’t know there were so many different kinds of metal,” my girlfriend said.

It was another fun year in Austin. The vibe was, as always, great, and the people were all lovely.

On Day Three, at the Hotel Vegas “Levitation Lounge,” I chatted with a father, Eric, and his son, Charlie from Minneapolis. Charlie had convinced Eric to come with him for the festival, and Eric was surprised to discover “This is all my music.” He was stunned at the sounds he was hearing, and loved how “You tell people you’re here for this festival, and they don’t know what you’re talking about. I love that. It’s like they don’t know it’s going on.”

Levitation still, somehow, feels like a secret even though it brings in some of the best bands in the world. “The level of musicianship here is amazing,” my girlfriend said after experiencing the festival for the first time.

It’s true. It’s always true.

See you next year, Austin.

Keep your mind open.

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Levitation Austin 2024 – Day Three

Like any other marathon, the three-quarter mark is when it really starts to hit you. The same can be said of Levitation Austin, as Day Three is when the festival starts culling the weak and you begin to hear people saying things like, “I tapped out at one a.m.,” “He wanted me to go to another show last night, but I just couldn’t,” and “Austin is kickin’ my ass today.”

It’s also when you start having weird synchronous moments with people you’ve seen at the festival. My girlfriend and I have seen the same woman at all but two of the shows we’ve attended so far. She’s come all this way from England to express her love for a festival cameraman. He’s married, by the way, and this woman’s friend isn’t happy that he’s been dismissive of her. There’s also “blond guy,” who looks and dresses like a character from an early 1990s video game and I think has been on some kind of illegal drug for three days, “Asian guy with a splint on his right index finger,” and “Guy with the big King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard patch on his jacket.”

We started Day Three with some friends and great BBQ (as one does in Austin at least once where you’re here) at a place called KG BBQ that mixes Texas BBQ with Egyptian flavors. It’s great. We then headed to Hotel Vegas for the “Levitation Lounge,” where no one bothered to check out RSVP tickets, and we had free drinks while listening to a DJ set by Death Valley Girls.

Death Valley Girls dropping science.

I was wearing my “Death Valley Girls Official Fan Club” shirt and was spotted by Bonnie Bloomgarden, the leader of DVG. She remembered me as the guy who keeps his phone set on black and white and, in a moment of joy for me, from this blog. They’d opened for Osees the previous night there and I told her I was excited to hear their new “Earth, Wind & Fire-sized line-up” later that night at Parish.

My DVG shirt proved to be popular. I had more comments on it than any other shirt I’ve worn all weekend. At least four people pointed at me and said, “Great shirt,” and then told me how they’d seen their Hotel Vegas set the previous evening and were amazed by it.

The surprisingly tall Dry Cleaning walked in not long after my lovely conversation with Ms. Bloomgarden. I thanked them for their set at the Far Out Lounge the previous night, and they told me how much they love playing in Austin. They were all delightful people and played a fun DJ set of their own that dropped in some classic Sade and Wham! tracks.

Dry Cleaning towering over the decks.

We wanted to stay for the Black Angels DJ set, but it was Day Three and we needed a disco nap. It turned out to be the right call because Austin got slammed with rain for about an hour and we would’ve been soaked on the walk back to our pad.

We came back to Hotel Vegas to first see local shredders Grocery Bag take the stage, and they played a wild set of fierce garage rock. Be sure to look them up.

Paper, plastic, or power?

After that was night number three of Osees’ four-night residency at Hotel Vegas. They ripped into it straight out of the gate (as always) and immediately floored by girlfriend, who was seeing them for the first time. She was amazed by their manic energy and how “they just go for it.” They threw in some punk ragers with a couple psych-rock cuts, showing how they can change shape faster than a D&D doppelgänger.

We then walked six blocks along 6th Street, maneuvering around stumbling drunks and people still in Halloween costumes lining up to cram into a small club spinning overplayed dance tracks from the early 2000s, to get to Parish and see DVG perform their heart-lifting yet spooky set of psychedelia. It was strange at first to see them with no guitars (apart from Sammy Westervelt on bass), replacing them with saxophone. “They sound like a spooky version of Morphine,” I thought. My girlfriend loved them and empowerment and spiritual healing messages they convey in their lyrics.

We headed to the Parish’s small lounge after the set and another guy pointed out my DVG shirt. It turned out he and his friend were at KG BBQ and noticed my shirt there. They’d seen DVG’s Hotel Vegas set and fell in love with them. One of them, Shafiq, got my “spooky Morphine” reference, and they were both from Chicago and frequented a lot of the same bar. The other, Imran, had been at the same Slift and Meatbodies show I attended at Reggie’s Music Joint weeks earlier. We all bonded over Gen X bands and chai.

Wine Lips, whom Shafiq had seen before (“First tickets I bought.”) and described as “The Toronto Osees,” came out and just went nuts. That might be the best way I can describe their set of crazy garage-psych. It was damn impressive. They barely let you take a breath.

Wine Lips drunk with shredding.

We stopped at a shawarma food truck on the way back, where I was again complimented on my DVG shirt, and then got back in time to settle down with my overflowing chicken and falafel wrap and watch the opening scenes of Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla. You can’t wrap up a festival day much better than that.

Up next, doom!

Keep your mind open.

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