I won’t lie, turning on the “Out of Office” for my work email was the most satisfying thing I’ve done at my job in three weeks. It’s been a breaststroke through bullshit to get ready, and I’m already exhausted before I’ve even left, but I know that in an hour’s time when I leave to go to the airport, get pulled out of line as part of a “random” check and finally get on a plane headed (direct!) for Amsterdam, it will have been worth it. I’m looking forward to it the way lungs look forward to air.

Well, not the flight itself — that I’ve been looking forward to the way lungs look forward to water — but certainly what comes after. Over the next two weeks, I’ll be keeping track of what until I can think of a better name I’ll be calling the “Euroventure 2013.” Tomorrow morning, when my plane lands at Schiphol in Amsterdam, I’ll jump on a by-now familiar yellow and blue train to Eindhoven, where I’ll check in at my hotel, probably crash out for a few hours, and then hit up a record store or two in the area — I was bummed to read Bullit Records closed, but maybe I’ll jump on a train and head to Tilburg, where I know there are a few shops — in preparation for what’s to come this weekend.

Thursday starts the Roadburn Festival 2013 at the 013 venue in Tilburg. As I have the last four years, I’ll be covering that as much as possible (one can’t see everything) front to back, words and pics from the whole thing. It’s going to be a massive undertaking, but for the next several days, there’s no place better on the planet to be than there.

Monday morning, I’ll hop a train back to Schiphol, then on to London hopefully in time to catch Elder at The Black Heart. I’ll be staying in London for a few days in advance of the start of Desertfest 2013, which begins with a pre-show Thursday night featuring Greek rockers 1000mods. From there, it’s another mind-boggling weekend of heaviness brought to you in similar fashion, words, pics, complaints about sore feet, and so on.

As with every year, I hope in advance you enjoy keeping up with this trip, and I want to say and advance thanks to the Roadburn and Desertfest crews for hosting me at these festivals, and to The Patient Mrs., who I’ve no doubt will have occasion to live up to her name before the next two weeks are through. I may post some off-topic stuff along the way, news, etc., but I hope you’ll bear with me in that regard, since time will no doubt be limited.

Much appreciated.

Off we go.

Tags: Euroventure 2013, London Desertfest 2013, Roadburn 2013

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 16th, 2013 at 12:02 pm and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.