“The Long and Winding Road …”
(this page may be updated as there are many events that might have been forgotten)
August 1989
Mobile Disco Show
After an experiment, running an illegal radio station with a couple of schoolfriends, this adventure quickly resulted in to the birth of “Explosia Drive-in Show“. Named after a track on a forbidden album of the artist “Dingetje“.
At first using mainly hired speakers and amplifiers but with an extensive music library.
January 1992
Drivers license
Finally, after one failed attempt, Martin passed for his drivers license.
June 1992
Interrupted by Law
It doesn’t matter whether you’re employed or not, everybody has to join the armed forces for a whole year and so does Martin.
Fortunately he can continue most of his DJ-skills as he manages to sneak out of the military base almost every night during the summer.
February 1995
Thunderdome
It’s been fun for many years but with the uprising popularity of “Thunderdome” and “Gabber” music, Martin has enough of it and pulls the plug on the drive-in show. All lighting gear get’s sold.
April 1995
Queensday Festivals
Every year the whole of The Netherlands celebrate the former Dutch Queen‘s birthday. Martin only sold the lighting effects and because of that he gets asked to provide the sound system for the bands playing live onstage.
September 1996
Truck license
Again, after two attempts, Martin has now passed for his truck drivers license and now possesses categories B and C.
July 1997
United Kingdom
After being tought how to properly do sound engineering for live bands by two great and really nice engineers from York, Martin decides (after having spent two summer holidays in York) to actually move there as you don’t get a chance like that every day.
September 1997
Surreal arrival
Arriving in York, a beautiful city in the North of England, on the day of Princess Diana‘s funeral. Normally it’s a great city with lots of tourists and busy roads but today driving from one end to the other of town doesn’t take the normal 25 to 35 minutes but less than 10 minutes. It’s like being in a Ghosttown.
November 1997
First “real” band
Jimmy Carl Black with the Muffin Men performing live in Fibbers, York.
Not even close of having enough microphones, cables and et cetera. During setup, Martin goes back and forth on his bicycle to the JSS Audio warehouse, where he works, to grab more of what he needs. The next day they phone JSS to let them know they had a great time and the show sounded awesome.
October 1998
Another First
Many of the sound engineers at JSS have one or two regular bands they work for. Martin seems to be the first to have three bands who ask for him when they are performing in or around York.
March 1999
Homesick?
You could call it homesick, but a combination of that together with the ambition to grow as a sound engineer, together with some happenings in Martin’s personal life, he decides to move back to Holland and explore Europe to discover the opportunities.
June 1999
Officially Registered
Martin is back in The Netherlands and is now officially registered as a freelance sound engineer.
July 1999
Belgian Tour
Less than a month after being registered and Martin embarks on a journey for Delta Audio lasting almost of the entire summer throughout the north-western part of Flemish Belgium.
October 1999
And another one …
Another drivers license to add on the list. Martin is now officially allowed to drive trucks with trailers.
December 1999
Sound Rental
Everybody is getting rather excited by the upcoming Millennium and clients keep asking to provide sound equipment for them. A perfect moment to consider buying a full PA-system.
Van Den Ban Sound Rental was born and a big Martin Audio and Ultrasonics speaker-system got purchased together with Soundcraft and Allen & Heath mixing desks, lots of Shure, Sennheiser and Audio Technica microphones and many other A-class outboard gear.
Enough gear to get the show going for more than 1500 persons.
April 2000
Subcontracting
Freelancing is still the main core of business but customers from the freelance business hire more and more complete audio systems with Martin accompanying the projects who are getting bigger every time.
January 2001
Truck
The amount of equipment for a lot of productions just gets too big, therefor a used Scania is bought to get all gear to the shows.
February 2002
New currency
A sad goodbye to the Dutch Guilder and a big hello to the new Euro.
The Scania truck was a little too big and wasn’t used as much as expected and got sold as the freelance work still has the main focus.
June 2002
Pinkpop
When at home, Martin was quite often working in The Tagrijn, a local venue in Hilversum and on the second show he worked there, he got invited by the Belgian band Millionaire to join them to do their monitors on the Dutch festival Pinkpop.
July 2002
Hallo Deutschland!
After having having spent some time on Pinkpop with the Rammstein crew, who were also playing there, Martin ended up with some new connections.
Not long after, Martin got his first assignment for Westfalen Sound, one of Europe’s biggest rental companies at that time.
August 2002
Mysteryland (NL)
After having setup and swiftly tuned a DJ monitor, whilst running around as crewchief at the dance festival “Mysteryland“, near Amsterdam, on assignment for Westfalen Sound his colleagues were apparently very impressed. From that moment on, Martin only got hired specifically as monitor engineer because of his skills and and because good monitor engineers are scarce.
September 2002
Bigger, better, more..
Westfalen Sound was great to join, it was an even bigger surprise that Martin got to work for Germany’s main “Rock ‘n Roll” rental company Schallwand who supplied festivals and artists such as Robbie Williams and Rock Am Ring.
Again, especially as a monitor engineer at seriously large venues and arena’s.
November 2002
Anything but “funny”
German TV station ZDF goes live on tour with “Die Lustige Musikanten“, which translates as “The Cheerful Musicians“. Many of Germany’s famous singers performing live with a grand orchestra throughout various concerthalls and arena’s in Germany and France.
They were, however, everything but cheerful. Together with a lousy production budget, lacking enough crew and hardly any sleep, it ended badly.
In the end, also due to some private misery, this production sent him into a burn-out lasting for more than a year.
December 2002
Enough is enough
At this point Martin decides to stop working for big companies, focussing on his own rental activities and perhaps do some freelancing next to it for clients performing at locations where no equipment has to be provided.
October 2004
Big, bigger, smaller
Not every show needs an arena sound-system. Even though Martin splits-up his main PA for smaller gigs, it’s still often too big for smaller/private parties so Martin buys a small set by HK Audio. It turns out to be a success as a lot of smaller clients manage to find him and loads of work seems to come in.
Strangely enough, even though the gigs on their own don’t make as much money, overall the profits go up quite extensively. Nevertheless the year ends up financially with a big loss.
August 2005
First recording jobs
“Never put all your money on one horse“
Without actually wanting to pursue a career in a studio, Martin invests in recording gear to not only amplify the music onstage but also to record it and mix it later for CD‘s and DVD‘s. Although it isn’t a great succes at first, Martin does learn a lot.
September 2005
Band Bus
An old Chevrolet ambulance gets converted into a nice van to travel with bands all over the Netherlands bringing them from one venue to the other.
December 2005
New adventures
Oh dear, something completely different as to what’s he is used to: Martin joins a Winter Circus for one season. Touring all the major theaters in the Netherlands …
as a sound engineer!!!
June 2007
On tour with …
Nobody less than Marilyn Manson himself!!! On assignment for Flashlight Rental, Martin joins the European tour lasting about 3 weeks.
July 2007
On tour with …
It’s getting really nice now as Martin now tours the whole of Europe with John Legend‘s “Show Me” tour. This lasts for about 6 weeks.
June 2008
New gear
The old existing gear is running at it’s end and also it’s not enough anymore to keep the shows out on the road. Especially the current amplifiers have deserved their retirement and no less than 20 Crest Audio amplifiers have been bought to replace the old ones.
July 2008
Amps & Racks
During the summer period it is fairly quiet with not a lot of festivals which is perfect to install all recently bought amplifiers in their racks. Plenty of time before the theatre season kicks off again.
September 2008
G. F. C.
We’re all geared up for the upcoming theatre season but instead the phone keeps ringing and the mailbox nearly explodes due to the many cancellations.
From a well filled agenda to an almost empty agenda for the remaining period this year in just a few weeks.
The Global Financial Crisis definitely left it’s mark and the future suddenly became very insecure.
February 2009
Could it get worse?
Yes, it can! 2009 started with a massive leak in the roof. The owner of the building hired some people to renew the roof but instead they left half-way during their job leaving the building without any cover against rain. And raining it does …
A LOT!!!
The result: about €11.000,- worth of damage and not being to able to rent out a large speaker system for the carnaval period.
All equipment is evacuated from the building and a new warehouse has to be found urgent.
August 2009
New warehouse
Fortunately it only took a few weeks to find a new storage and workshop which was a huge relief. The space was actually even better than the previous storage.
But it turned out to be for a short period as the owner of that building (or so I thought) hadn’t paid his rent for quite some time and the real owner barricaded the whole building making it nearly impossible to access the gear, let alone get it in our out.
Here we go again!!!
September 2009
Temporary storage
A temporary storage has been found on a farm, in a large barn. The equipment is dry, but it does suffer a little as there are many birds flying in and out of the building leaving their marks on the flightcases.
Because Martin moved to the northern province of Friesland, the search for a new warehouse continued in the north.
January 2010
Must be dreaming
After a year of misery, there was finally some good news to report. A new warehouse was found and it was a real legit company I hired it from. A contract (that was a first) was signed and with the help of two engineers, who I also call dear friends, we moved everything in a day in one XXL truck.
Also the rental activities seems to pick up again so there’s some hope again for the future.
February 2010
To drag a dead horse
It started to look promising in 2010 but the financial problems from the last few years got a hold of him and after again some cancellations of a couple of stages during the “Noorderslag / Eurosonic” festival Martin simply had to acknowledge that there wasn’t enough work to pay the bills.
After a few, very emotional, weeks Martin had to decide to quit his rental company and sell all his equipment. In a way you could say he’s gone bankrupt if it wasn’t for his amazing girlfriend.
The last show which will be using Martin’s equipment is Parson Brown on the 14th of February 2010.
March 2010
Freelancing again
To Martin’s big relief most of the equipment was sold for a fairly good price, leaving only a reasonable small debt behind which can be paid back over a few years.
The bigger surprise was that fairly a lot of old customers kept asking if Martin could continue to work for them on various productions. A few of them even bought a substantial amount of gear to get the jobs done.
“It feels very surreal as it isn’t my equipment anymore but I’m still working with it“
April 2010
Caro Emerald
There was a huge buzz going around in the Netherlands. Caro Emerald had her first hit-single out and it’s been topping the charts for months.
This month her first (sold out) live performance was at the “013” in Tilburg and Martin was hired to do the monitor sound. The show was a huge succes, the band loved working with Martin but unfortunately her management already had other plans and people for the future making it just a one-off show for Martin.
October 2010
New venue
The old “Tagrijn” in Hilversum was closed and demolished some years ago and became the “Vorstin” which opened it’s doors this month.
A brand spanking new pop venue in Hilversum and Martin was one of the first regular “in-house engineers”.
“It’s great to be back and also have lots of opportunities, networking with bands and other acts. Oh, and not having to load the truck after every show is also a big bonus“
September 2012
Stagemanagement
Martin has been around for quite some time. Mostly as a soundengineer but managing and organising events has been a substantial part of his work too. This month he was running the mainstage of the Legends Festival, Apeldoorn, where he also handled parts of the overall organisation of the festival.
October 2012
Entering The Board
Martin enters the board of direction of the local townhouse “It Waed“. His responsibility will be organising the live events and the website. A new challenge as it’s the first time Martin starts in such a position.
First show on the agenda:
“Vannstein! Europe’s Number 1 Rammstein tribute band“
June 2014
End of an era
“Many years working like mad only to be swept away like some dust on a box“, that’s how it feels after a new technical leader takes his place in the venue “Duycker” in Hoofddorp. Of course normally it wouldn’t be a big problem but this time Martin felt betrayed like being stabbed in the back and because Martin doesn’t handle politics well, he decides to stop working for all pop venues.
“How much fun it mostly is, you can’t seem to get rid of politics in those places.“
June 2015
On tour with …
A busy month as Martin goes on tour again. Firstly he’ll set off with Kiss who he will be joining for a few days and straight after that One Direction will be accompanied by Martin for the next 4½ weeks.
June 2016
Vannstein
Martin has been a fan of the German band Rammstein for quite some time. He therefor was also very keen to do the sound of Dutch Rammstein tribute band Vannstein when they were first performing in “Duycker” somewhere in 2012.
He had a great time with them and always kept in touch. This month they all came to an agreement to work with each other, starting at the “Dokk’em Open Air” festival in Dokkum, Friesland.
June 2017
Proper tools
Doing sound for a band is great, but it’s incredibly hard not being able to get the standards everybody is used to when you have use low budget equipment.
This month we had a show with Stillmode, all the way in the utmost southwest of the Netherlands, Philippine. The sound just wasn’t good enough and the complaints kept flying through the air.
At that moment Martin decided to get a Digico mixing desk, rather sooner than later.
August 2018
Hard work pays off
The Digico has arrived. The goal was a new SD9 mixing desk but a second hand SD8-24 (the compact version of a SD8) mixing desk came up in a pristine condition.
The desk was collected in Cologne, Germany and went straight through to the “Koempelrock” festival in the south of the Netherlands where not only Martin used it for Vannstein, but the technical supplier of the festival itself too, as they had a massive fault in their system.
September 2018
Joined forces
After a brief exploration about how to travel in comfort to the south of France, Martin joined forces with the management Dutch band “The Wild Romance” who are in possession of an awesome “nightliner“.
Martin is allowed to hire the bus for Vannstein and will, in return, drive it for
The Wild Romance.
March 2019
On tour with …
Vannstein sets off on a tour throughout France‘s biggest concerthalls ranging from 17.500 up to 25.000 spectators.
Martin will drive the nightliner and do the sound of Vannstein.
Vannstein will continue this tour in April 2019.
January 2020
My own nightliner?
Martin travels to Italy to inspect a double decker coach to create his own nightliner.
The negotiations took a few week but in the end he buys the bus: a Neoplan Skyliner from 1995 with a 500hp Mercedes V8 engine and only has to wait for a few weeks for some repairs to be finished.
February 2020
Covid-19
Whilst Martin was waiting for his return flight to the Netherlands, the news-channels on Italian TV reported the first Covid-19 patient found in Rome.
It took less than a month before the north of Italy went into a complete lockdown making it impossible to collect the bus in Lucca due to all the export documents which couldn’t be supplied by the Italian government.
To be continued!!!
July 2020
So it begins …
Still uncertain times all over the world but the bus (meanwhile named “Baba Yaga“) can be picked up in Lucca. Martin sets off in his car with a trailer for the car on the way back home.
After a long day in Italy, arranging all export documents, Martin finally departs Lucca but less than 100km’s later, it all comes to an abrupt standstill caused by a fire in the engine compartment.
March 2022
Freedom again
All Covid-19 measures have been taken down so public events, festivals are allowed to take place.
Time for good hope for the future again, although times remain to be financially challenging the upcoming years.
December 2023
Simply the Best …
It’s been almost 20 years since the last time but Martin’s back on a theatre-tour with Nurlaila Karim who is well-known for her role as Tina Tuner in the musical about Tina’s life. She will visit theatres all over the Netherlands with the show
“Simply the Best of Tina”
The tour starts with a month for promotions and bookings and will be continued in September lasting until the end of January 2025.