Hit The Road Jack...........

thumpingrug

So sorry to hear whats happened and you have my best wishes that this gets resolved.   I had a minor farmers problem years back but thankfully for me the elastic bands did their thing and all has been good since.

Good luck with this dude.

Sarge

I know it was well meant, but I for one won't be offering to help where someone else's arsehole is involved!

Good luck mate!

holnrew

Blimey, sounds unpleasant.

Alnico

I've been signed off by the GP for another month at least.

I had hoped things had 'Settled' enough that i could go back to work next week but after today's examination, there is no chance.

If i return to work in a months time, i've still lost £3k - it's £500 a week (Net) down the drain for every week i sit (on good days) here, unable to do anything.

It's not been a good week and i don't hold out much hope for the rest of it.

Sarge

In that month you could buy and sell a fee guitars to top up the loss of earnings, just a thought.
Hope things get better for you soon!

Alnico

Sarge said:

In that month you could buy and sell a fee guitars to top up the loss of earnings, just a thought.
Hope things get better for you soon!

Thanks man but with no capital to start and a slow market i can't do it.

Thanks for the idea though, i have been trying to come up with similar ideas.

One thing is for certain though,..................I have some amazing equipment now and none of it is going anywhere.

For the first time in my life i am 100% happy with my guitar, amp and pedals and i see them now as an investment in never having to jump on that merry-go-round ever again so selling any of them would be futile. To be honest, i can play again now i can sort of sit up of the sofa again and my guitar is keeping me sane right now so i can at least use the time to re-connect with it and maybe actually learnt to use the pedals i have properly.

TTony

Can you do any teaching?

chillidoggy

Don't take this the wrong way, but are dukes a side-effect of lorry driving? I mean too much time sat on your arse, sweating? I spend a lot of time sat on my arse, and thankfully I've never suffered, apart from the usual cocktail of alcohol and chilies, of course. Just wondering if the driving is actually a cause, or whether it's luck of the draw.

Alnico

TTony said:

Can you do any teaching?

I can do yes but i must make it clear, i can spend an hour or two teaching anyone 'This or That' but i can;t even read music so it's not official guitar lessons and it is restricted.

It works on the level that the person i'm teaching has a good understanding of chords and can play quite a few of them, then i can teach them how to understand chord structure, common licks that run throughout different songs and genres, how to improve phrasing, how to learn songs by ear and becoming familiar with common patterns on the fretboard, right hand technique and some very basic fingerpicking, timing and rhythm,..................................

So you see there is a fair amount i could do there but i have never been able to see this as 'Worth Paying For', it's more the kind of thing a couple of mates would share with each other while jamming, if that makes sense. I would have a hard time asking for £££ per hour to teach this sort of thing. Maybe that's me being naive but i prefer to think of it as me being realistic and decent.

One thing which i might look at doing is a jam session workshop based on jam session survival skills. This worked well when i did it as a 1 - 1 with one of the guys from here and i guess that is something i could call 'Worth it' because to those who have never jammed before, it's a very good foundation for them.

The problems with putting it together are not impossible to overcome but they are:

Time and Date needs to suit everyone and some people will not make it on the day. This needs to be weighed up against the cost of a rehearsal studio for the afternoon.

It would be based Nearby to Bedford until further notice so anyone interested would be travelling somewhere close ish to here.

What do you charge for an afternoon of jamming, learning and confidence building ?

It's an idea that's been knocked about before, i remember discussing it with @hobbio a few months ago and @freddievanhalen did actually come to a studio in Bedford for exactly this. It went very well and far from me teaching another player how to play, it was all based on how to survive at a jam session. We covered song choice, typical chord progressions / structure, how to play 'Fills' and make a fairly boring piece sound a bit more interesting, how to improvise and quite a few other aspects of what seems to frighten people at Jam's.

If enough people are seriously interested in this and while i have some time on my hands, i would be more than happy to do it for you.

How does that sound ?

Alnico

chillidoggy said:

Don't take this the wrong way, but are dukes a side-effect of lorry driving? I mean too much time sat on your arse, sweating? I spend a lot of time sat on my arse, and thankfully I've never suffered, apart from the usual cocktail of alcohol and chilies, of course. Just wondering if the driving is actually a cause, or whether it's luck of the draw.

Yes.

It's as simple as that. Add to that a 'Variable' diet based on what you can get, when you can get it and you get a 'Difficult' digestive transit system which leads to straining when going to the toilet. Add to that a shit load of coffee and energy drinks, sweets, pop and other 'Heavy Fuel' and you have the perfect conditions for Asteroids.

chillidoggy

Gotcha. Sympathies, dude.

TTony

Alnico said:

TTony said:

Can you do any teaching?

I can do yes but i must make it clear, i can spend an hour or two teaching anyone 'This or That' but i can;t even read music so it's not official guitar lessons and it is restricted.

It works on the level that the person i'm teaching has a good understanding of chords and can play quite a few of them, then i can teach them how to understand chord structure, common licks that run throughout different songs and genres, how to improve phrasing, how to learn songs by ear and becoming familiar with common patterns on the fretboard, right hand technique and some very basic fingerpicking, timing and rhythm,..................................

That's exactly the sort of teaching that I would have gone for years ago.  I didn't want the theory or being taught how to read music - in fact those are exactly the reasons that I stopped having guitar lessons (age 11, classical).  

We found a teacher for my stepson years ago.  He didn't teach theory (etc) either - he taught my stepson how to play stuff that he wanted to play, and explained why it sounded good (ie the theory aspects).  He didn't teach theory, but he explained it.  After seeing how effective it was, I actually went to the same guy for a couple of lessons and so much became so much clearer so quickly - all the stuff that I'd worked out for myself through the year, but never "understood".  If only I'd known ...

So don't under-estimate your skills and the value of your knowledge and experience.

Alnico said:

What do you charge for an afternoon of jamming, learning and confidence building ?

Someone could spend a lot of money and time learning the theory, learning the scales, learning the positions, building up speed (etc, etc, etc), but never become a "player" because they lack the confidence and experience of playing with others.

In which case, your input and guidance is arguably worth more than all the time and money that they spent on learning the theory - which is useless unless they also have the confidence.

You have a very natural, relaxed, confidence-building style (based on what I saw you do at the KJ gig in Leicester).  That's what makes the difference between a teacher and a mentor.

It'd take a bit of organising, but the idea of getting a few people in a room and doing some demo stuff to a group rather than 1:1 lessons might be a more relaxed way of doing it, as well as more lucrative.  

But that might be getting us into a career-change decision.

FreddieVanHalen

Alnico said:

TTony said:

Can you do any teaching?

I can do yes but i must make it clear, i can spend an hour or two teaching anyone 'This or That' but i can;t even read music so it's not official guitar lessons and it is restricted.

It works on the level that the person i'm teaching has a good understanding of chords and can play quite a few of them, then i can teach them how to understand chord structure, common licks that run throughout different songs and genres, how to improve phrasing, how to learn songs by ear and becoming familiar with common patterns on the fretboard, right hand technique and some very basic fingerpicking, timing and rhythm,..................................

So you see there is a fair amount i could do there but i have never been able to see this as 'Worth Paying For', it's more the kind of thing a couple of mates would share with each other while jamming, if that makes sense. I would have a hard time asking for £££ per hour to teach this sort of thing. Maybe that's me being naive but i prefer to think of it as me being realistic and decent.

One thing which i might look at doing is a jam session workshop based on jam session survival skills. This worked well when i did it as a 1 - 1 with one of the guys from here and i guess that is something i could call 'Worth it' because to those who have never jammed before, it's a very good foundation for them.

The problems with putting it together are not impossible to overcome but they are:

@Alnico, sorry to hear you've not been well on top of everything else you've had to put up with recently. I'm as much into toilet humour as your next overgrown school kid but bleeding like that must be pretty scary :-(

On the jam session coaching stuff,  I really enjoyed our afternoon together and got a lot out of it. It was valuable to me.

There are thousands of youtube videos and training courses about theory and technique but little of that is going to be useful if you can't apply it with other people.

Lots of people learn songs on their own, but far fewer learn to link them to other songs and real life situations and mix them up on the fly like you showed me.

I think it is worth ££ per hour to get some coaching on that stuff. It is valuable to be helped along by someone who's encouraging and understands the dynamics of keeping a jam session moving along and providing a safe and confidence building environment.

When you've learned to ride a bike it's easy to forget how valuable the stabilisers were when you were getting started

How much is it worth? I don't know for sure so take my thoughts with a massive pinch of salt, but some thoughts:

A good teacher could be £45 an hour or more.

People will pay anywhere from £5 to £15 to go to a gym class.

How much is a golf lesson?

If you did a session with five or six people and only charged them 10 or 15 each for an hour or two that would be a fucking bargain for them compared to what they'd get out of it. And if you do it btw, if people aren't prepared to pay in advance what they're saying is that they don't want to do it, or they can't be arsed, or some other flaky BS.

I don't know why but there's a common mindset or some kind of thinking in British society that music should involve the starving artist thing and it's nuts when people will happily pay out lots of cash for shitty coffees, sports coaching for their kids, language teaching or whatever else it might be.

Hmmm, the air's getting hard to breathe up here on this high horse time for me to get down lol

Also agree with @TTony, there's loads of scope for teaching/coaching people without needing the deep music theory or reading stuff. First guitar teacher I ever had didn't teach my any of that stuff because I was 14 and I just wanted to rock out !

Alnico

It's over.

I have already pulled my last load, i just didn't know it at the time.

I went to a private hospital last week and paid for a full examination from a highly experienced surgeon.

What's wrong with me is so bad that even now 6 weeks after the prolapse, i am still too swollen to operate on. He said that no surgeon would attempt it because it will kill you, within minutes from massive, uncontrollable bleeding.

It could be up to 6 months before things settle down enough to operate. Even then, he said i need an long recovery afterwards because of the sheer amount of work that needs to be done in there and THEN, if i go and drive another truck within the first 12 months and i go back to 'That' lifestyle, i can look forward to it happening all over again. The physical strain will be enough to allow barely healed tissue to do exactly the same thing, or worse.

My HGV Licence expires in 2017 and i was never going to renew it. I promised Debbie and Morgan that i would stop driving at some point over the next two years anyway.

Now, while i'm off supposedly recovering and waiting for an operation, everything else that could possibly go wrong with me is doing royally. I have had full on flu, sinusitis, nasal polyps, the most ridiculously sore back i've ever felt and generally i am falling apart. My body has been under such continuous stress for such a long time that all those things it's been fighting through and coping with are suddenly coming through and hitting me hard.

My company left me without sick pay so i'm at the mercy of the DSS, which is proving to be typical red tape and treacle but from what ALL the medical people have told me:

I can't drive a Truck now, i'm recovering for anywhere from 2 months to 6 months.

I can't drive a Truck after the operation for 8 weeks because i will be recovering.

I can't drive a Truck after the operation for 12 months or it will all happen again.

I can't drive a Truck after 2017 because my licence will have expired and renewal depends on medical approval form doctor !

I can't drive a Truck anymore.

"That's it Driver, end of the road. Hand your keys in and watch your step as you leave. Take care, 'Old Fella' !"

Everything i was warned about when first climbed up into a cab has come true. I was warned about what the Truck and the job will do to me but i gave up enlisting in the Armed Forces (REME) to become a Trucker. I promised my Late Father, who served in REME (Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers) (Rough Engineering Made Easy !) that i would never serve - that was what he wanted and the only promise he ever asked to keep, so i did. What that meant was that i went at my chosen career of Trucking with the same hunger and sense of purpose as i would have done in the Army. The problem seems to be now that because i was left to fend for myself and work it all out as i go along, i never had any real instruction and certainly never any discipline. You did whatever you could (Dared to do) to get the job done as quickly as possible without getting nicked or hurt. Especially in the early 90's when i started, the attitude (Rightly or Wrongly) to Health and Safety was a mere shadow of what it is today, both on the roads and off.

All those missions, all those "Yeah, Fuck it, it'll be alright" 's, the oil-tanker-full of coffee that i must have drunk, the substances ("Lemsip, Your Honour"), the 15 hour shifts, the 500 mile journeys in one day on top of the problems loading and unloading, the bad diet, the sheer lack of sleep, the wrecked relationships (Long time ago but they still fell to this job),................

Alnico

Most of all, the most terrifying thing i've learned about myself is how fragile i really am. I grew up in Liverpool with a demob'd Soldier as role model. YOU WORK, it's as simple as that. You work as hard as you can and just when you think you can't take anymore, take one more deep breath and give it everything. You will discover muscles and inner strength you never knew you had.

This didn't just come from Dad, this was from every bloke i knew. So from the age of 13 getting up at 3am to do 3 paper rounds before school and 2 afterwards in the afternoon, right the way through my whole life i have had a job. Through two recessions i have had a job and worked my ass off, because that's what you do.

My Late Father suffered with MS for the last 25 years of his life so as he got worse, i felt more and more obliged to work hard and push myself so that in a way he could live some sort of life vicariously through me. When he Died in 2001 i carried on as i always had, to try to keep his spirit alive within me and then i blinked and it's 2015 and i'm standing next to a truck in the middle of Felixstowe Docks with my body, literally falling apart.

This person i am now, this old wreck of a man,..........it's not me. Who the fuck is that in the mirror? It can't be me, i was pretty good looking when i put that first pair of Ray Bans on and roared off into the sunset ! There's no way that just 'Going to Work', like your supposed to can do THAT,..............is there ?

'A Working Class Hero' is most definitely NOT "Something to be" !!!

A WALKING STICK ?  You've got the wrong Bloke !!!

My brain says "Head for the bar as you laugh at them. Reach into your denim jacket, find cigarettes and / or a joint and don't worry about it sunshine. Tomorrow's a new day and you won't feel it then. Even if you do, you'll pull through it, you always do,.....it just the way of things. You'll be fine now head up, take a drag and get a cold beer into you lad."

My Body now just makes some noise like a laugh and a whimper at the same time and crumbles underneath me making my brave laughter seem rather misplaced, metaphorically speaking.

So That's it, i'm hitching a lift somewhere (Fuck knows where) from the side of the road just like any normal everyday 'Schmuck'. The years of experience count for almost nothing and i gave away my health and my youth just to pay the bills. Sure, i'm a REALLY well rounded person with no savings, no mortgage, debts that even the 'Al Fayed's would wince at and barely enough health to sit at a computer and type.

Alnico

I'm going to finish this blog off with these lyrics to an ancient folk song that originated in this country, hundreds of years ago.

In the old days, a man might die in the house he had been born in without ever having travelled above five miles away from it. The main means of communication in static, rural communities were potholed and treacherous roads and the waggoners who travelled them bearing goods, mail and gossip were important people. The dangers and hardship of their open-air life added a romantic flourish to the attraction of their roving trade and the charm of their freedom of movement.

The Truckers of their day drove horse drawn carts and went from village to village trading food, goods and bringing news to each village. In each village they were so gratefully received by the villagers who depended on them so much that they were treated like celebrities are today. They never needed to go home and the 'Life on the road' was the life they lived, come hell or high water.

They became known as 'The Jolly Waggoners'. 

Despite all common sense and at great cost to myself, i am very proud to say that i was one of their modern day equivalents.

'The Jolly Waggoners'

When first I went a-waggoning, a-waggoning did go
Well, it filled my poor old parents' hearts with sorrow, grief, and woe
And many are the hardships that i have since been through.

Chorus (after each verse):

Sing whoa my lads, sing whoa, drive on my lads, Hi-Oh,
Who wouldn't lead a life just like we jolly waggoners do.

When it's pelting down with rain, my lads, I get wetted to the skin
But I bear it with contented heart until I reach the inn
And I sit down a-drinking with the landlord and his kin.

Well, things is greatly altered now and waggons few are seen
The world's turned topsy-turvy, lads, and things is run by steam
And the whole world passes before me just like a morning dream.

Aye, things is greatly altered now but then what can us do
The folks in power all take no heed to the likes of me and you
It's hardship for us workmen, lads, and a fortune for the few.

Well, Martinmas is coming, lads, what pleasures we shall see
Like chaff before the wind, my lads, we'll make our money flee
And every lad shall take his lass and he'll have her on his knee.

Alnico

Goodbye Lads.

viz

Mate that was a harrowing read - the bleeding sounded terrifying, and now what you're left contemplating is also really scary, I just wish you the best. And it's been a fascinating read, you're a really good writer. Are you sure you're not missing your calling?

bigjon

I echo what viz said, you're a really good writer (as well as player / singer / performer and, by all accounts, teacher / mentor). Lots to offer the world - for now, how about starting a new blog on here to journal the recovery process?

Adam_MD

Andy while you're recovering you should really keep writing dude you have real talent for it. I'd read the confessions of the Jolly Waggoner.

If you feel up to having a visitor and a jam at any point let me know or if you feel like getting out for a bit let me know and I'll come get you.