Since I'm here, maybe I'll check out some of Mark's online guitar lessons

[weebz]

Heck, I could learn something. :o

[Mark Wein]

And they're free ;D

[weebz]

I really suck at guitar, btw. ;D

[Mark Wein]

I really suck at guitar, btw. ;D


That''s where we all start ;D

[weebz]

I really suck at guitar, btw. ;D


That''s where we all start ;D


Yeah but I started 19 years ago. :o

[Jake S.]

I really suck at guitar, btw. ;D


That''s where we all start ;D


Unless your me.

[Mark Wein]

I really suck at guitar, btw. ;D


That''s where we all start ;D


Yeah but I started 19 years ago. :o


Well get to gettin' then!

[Phil513]

My dad is pretty cool. He knew i was trying to learn from Mark's stuff, but have dial up at home, so he captured some of marks YouTube stuff and burned them on a disk for me to watch at home.

He's 84 or something like that, and can do just about anything on a computer. hahaha

[Mark Wein]

Whats sad is that I'm younger and fairly computer savvy and the DVD I burned for you didn't work :-[

[Jake S.]

My dad is pretty cool. He knew i was trying to learn from Mark's stuff, but have dial up at home, so he captured some of marks YouTube stuff and burned them on a disk for me to watch at home.

He's 84 or something like that, and can do just about anything on a computer. hahaha


Hahaha I love old people who don't suck at technology. :P

[Phil513]

Whats sad is that I'm younger and fairly computer savvy and the DVD I burned for you didn't work :-[


This, folks, is true. hahahaha.

Let me tell you about dad. The owner of that cool blazer in the classic car thread.

He was born right into the middle of the great depression. His family lost everything, they lived in Texas. Became migrant cotton pickers in West Texas and New Mexico. He lied about his age at 16 and joined the army, into the still functioning horse cavalry, believe it or not. Horse Cavalry in texas, not fun. I dont know exactly how, but by the time WWII came around, he was in the air force. I think it was an offshoot of the army air corps or something, but anyhow, Air Force now. Stationed in England, tail gunner on a B25 Liberator. 55 missions (yes, 55) over Germany and therabouts. After the war he went into supply, ended up supply sgt for the Alaska Air Command. (Yours truly enters the picture). After i was born, he retired from the AF and went into the Civil Service, at the very start of computers. Vacuum Tubes and Punch Cards. Eventually he left that and became a Pastor of a church in AK, then down here in Cali, then retired. Now he does ALL sorts of computer stuff for people, restoring old photos and vinyl records to CD, stuff like that.

Im very proud to be his kid. He's quite a guy.

[Mark Wein]

Im very proud to be his kid. He's quite a guy.


Sounds like it!

[weebz]

Horse Cavalry in texas, not fun. I dont know exactly how, but by the time WWII came around, he was in the air force.


I bet it had something to do with secret government flying horses. :o

[Phil513]

Pegusii!

He has some great stories from back then.

[Prages]

Your dad sounds very cool.

My dad is about 20 years younger than yours. He went to college for one semester after high school, then dropped out and joined the Army for a few years. Never saw battle (was right between Korea and Vietnam). After the Army, he got a job in the coal mines. A few years later he was in a minor accident that left him with a knee that only had about 60% mobility. An underground miner is pretty much useless with a knew that only bends 1/2 way. This was the early 70s though, and the company kept him on as an above ground carpenter. Up until the early 80s, all the mining operations in WV were union mines. That all changed in the early 80s and as a result, the new contract wasn't approved and all the union workers went on strike, while the mines operated with non-union (scab) workers. The union actually banded together and did their best to take care of the workers that went on strike. We had small paychecks every month and a stock of rice, powdered milk, and commodity cheese.

When this happened, my mother went back to work after 10 years + of being a stay at home mom. She had been a secretary before her and dad met, and got a temp job at Union Carbide Chemical plant as a secretary while dad was picketting.

After about a year of being on strike, dad decided that he was probably never going to have a mining job again, so he went back to college at 40 years old. He still went to the picket line and collected his modest check and brought home the commodity cheese, but he took college courses in the evenings and ended up graduating a few years later with a degree in accounting. There was a period of about two years where both my father and my older sister were in college. No WV jokes, please. :D

So, by this time, my mother has a permanent job at Union Carbide, and my dad gets a job with the State of WV. To this day, I really don't know what my dad's job for the state is though. :-[

Things have been pretty much status quo since the late 80s/early 90s. Mom still works for Dow (which bought Union Carbide a few years ago) and dad still works for the state.

Somehow through all of that, my sister and I always had new clothes for school, plenty of food to eat, and never had to take out a single student load for college.

My sister ended up dropping out of college her junior year and joinging the Army. She's held a bunch of jobs since then, some great jobs with big salaries and good benefits, some making less than minimum wage waitressing at a bowling alley. I graduated from college and have been semi-gainfully employed since.

My older sister is now living with my parents. Not because she's a leach, but because my grandparents live about 100 yards away from my parents and my grandfather need constant care, and my grandmother isn't far behind. My father has also been having a lot of health problems lately, and my sister is pretty much there to make sure everybody has somebody to help them out. Unfortunately, Mrs. P and I live over an hour away and both work full time and then some, so we can't be there to help as much.

So yeah, I guess I'm pretty proud of my family too, even though they aren't quite as cools as Phil's dad.

[Phil513]

I think thats very cool. I admire him a lot for going back to school. I wanted to go into some kind of medicine, like nursing or something. But the schooling looked so overwhelming, i just figured nah. And look, i prolly would have completed the courses 4 years ago now if i had done it. I'd be neck deep in a new career.

And as for working in the mines, wow. Everything i have ever heard about that work is absolutely brutal. I'll pass on that.

[Mark Wein]

So yeah, I guess I'm pretty proud of my family too, even though they aren't quite as cools as Phil's dad.


I think all of our parents were from the generation where you just "made things work". They were all probably cooler (and tougher) than we'll ever be :)

My dad was born in 1928 in Brooklyn. Grew up working from the time he was 6 years old - my grandmother would bring home piecework from the garment district and they would wind lace onto spools or things like that from after dinner to bedtime to make extra money. He always had some kind of work from developing pictures in a photo booth in a Coney Island amusement park to making Hot Dogs at the original Nathans Hotdog stand.

I think the coolest job he had was in WW2 while he was still in high school they took kids from his High School (he was in a technical school) and took them to upstate New York to help refurbish B17 bombers they had brought back from the European theater of operations. Sometimes he was overhauling engines and sometimes hosing human remains out of planes...something I never had to think about at age 15...

When he was 16 he forged a signature on a form and enlisted in the Navy in 1944. He spent the next 2 years in the south Pacific as a Seabee building runways and doing other non-combat stuff. The only time he was ever shot at was by American M.P's in the Philippines for being out after curfew... :). I actually still have the Telegram my grandparents sent to him while he was at sea on his 18th birthday.

After the war (he was actually only in the Navy 14 months and had accumulated enough points to be discharged early) he thought of joining as a career but felt that there was "no place for a Jewish kid in a military that appeared to him to be made of racist rednecks" (an actual quote).

Dad went to an electronics trade school just off of Times Square in 1947 and hung out in the same clubs where musicians like Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie were inventing bebop. He was there for the girls and the momentousness of the art going on around him went completely over his head ;D

He worked odd jobs and was called back for Korea...they filled their quota for that day a few people in front of him so he was let go. They were also asking for volunteers to go sit in the desert for atomic bomb testing but fortunately my dad knew that was a bad idea...

Throughout the 50's and 60's he worked for RCA in a variety of capacities and eventually made the jump to self educated engineer. We moved to California in 1977 and he worked for a company that eventually was bought by Ericsson (sp?) and invented an engineering position within the company that insured that he couldn't be replaced by a person half his age for half the money with twice the education.

My Dad passed away almost 2 years ago and even though we didn't have the best relationship at times I've come to realize the person he was and miss him greatly.... :(

[Phil513]

How did your dad feel about your music interests Mark?

[hobo]

Mark lesson's are easy to follow and he is one great teacher on his videos. Now if I can only get past his 2nd acoustic lesson ;D

[Mark Wein]

How did your dad feel about your music interests Mark?


Until we opened the studio he kept asking "how long did I think this music thing was going to last" and "what was I going to do for a real job". :)

[Phil513]

lolz. Just as any good dad should. hahahaha.

[Mark Wein]

lolz. Just as any good dad should. hahahaha.


Yeah... :)