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Thank you very much and God bless you.
Posted on 05/04/2025 4:30:37 PM PDT by FMBass
"Stage 5 Bass" is my third instrumental album. This one focusing on kidney failure.
I'm a retired chemical engineer, lifelong electric bassist, and Navy veteran living with stage 5 kidney failure as a result of Agent Orange exposure during the Vietnam War.
Crafted during ongoing dialysis treatments, "Stage 5 Bass" is an emotionally charged, sonically rich collection of instrumental works, with the electric guitar stepping forward as lead voice. The album dives headfirst into themes of survival, memory, and resilience, each track a snapshot of life lived in a body sustained by machines.
With track titles like “Size Fifteen Needles,” “Vibrant Fistulas,” and “GFR Glissando,” the album blends technical precision with raw emotion, humor, and groove. Bass-forward and fiercely original, Stage 5 Bass explores the edges of jazz, rock, ambient, and experimental music, offering a soundtrack to a journey few have walked—but many will feel.
Available on all major streaming platforms
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
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Thank you very much and God bless you.
Thank you for your service.
Thanks for the acknowledgement, but probably due to having hid the fact for a good ten years after I got out, that I was even in the service, let along a Vietnam vet, I still feel strange whe people say that to me.
It’s hard to explain to today’s vets why that was, but when we came home, we were not looked upon in the same manor that today’s vets are.
Thank you for posting. And yes, THANK YOU for your service!
All due respect. plenty of it.
Thank you, sir.
Right there with you, brother. Not on dialysis but sticking to exercise and a healthy diet while on transplant list. Are you on a list?
Although I'm primarily a 6-string electric guitarist, I've played 4- and 5-string bass in many bands over the years, most notably in our area's Grateful Dead tribute band for the past decade. On the bass, jazz improv, space, rock, blues, all come naturally.
So I listened with interest to a bit of your latest composition, and will listen at length later when I have time to concentrate. It's frankly a little challenging even to my 73-year old ears (now somewhat deafened due to 60 years of playing too damn loud), and I want to learn more of what you're saying. Music that you have to learn to listen to, fascinates me: bands and players like Mahavishnu, Zappa, Stanley Clarke, Victor Wooten. Music to pay attention to.
Much respect, Sir, prayers for your battle with the kidney failure, and again, thank you and God Bless.
I don’t know if this is original-it wouldn’t surprise me if someone else thought of it first, but it’s a variation of “100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall”.
One hundred rolls of tp on the wall, one hundred rolls of tp,
take a big sh—, whattaya get, ninety-nine rolls of tp on the wall…and so on.
We use music, we use humor, or whatever other mechanisms we can come up with to cope.
Are you eligible for a kidney transplant? I hope that’s a possibility.
Five years ago had I read this post I would have had a different response. There is actually some evidence out there that different frequencies, even in music, have a way of helping patients with everything from kidney failure to shingles.
I just went to Grok and put in the fullowing question: Is there frequency research that deals with kidney failure?
I am finding Grok gives me answers that I can never get with duckduckgo and certainly not with google. Check out frequencies, music, and other medical problems. You won’t find this information in the NYTimes or google.
a cat purring is also supposed to have healing properties
and a baby in the womb is affected by noise outside
pretty wild stuff
Yeah, I dig. My ears are shot also.
Very cool that you picked up on my respect for Zappa and the more complicated stuff. As my career dwindled, I was more a jazz trio/quartet kinda player. As far as bassists go, I was pretty much a cross between Jack Bruce and James Jamerson, making it a strange heritage to be playing jazz standards. There was a point when I could plan all the Jamerson/ Bruce stuff. Jaco, although I could play a few things here and there, was a stretch for me. The modern guys, like Wooten, Joe Dart, or Vincen Garcia, and a bunch of the others, are way above was a considered great a few decades ago.
Yeah, the VA theoretically has me on a list, but they also let ne know that by the time a kidney becomes available for my blood type, my age would probably rule me out.
Watching for the pig thing to develop into somethin viable.
A couple of years ago I would have considered this stuff really fringe but I’ve actually come to think some of this so called fringe therapy has benefit. It might not be for everyone, but covid and the useless and damaging drugs have convinced me that it’s good to seek alternative treatments outside of the mainstream.
Years ago I had a very smart primary care physician. He was telling me that he had a patient with a very bad back who was told he needed back and disc surgery. That patient was worried about surgery and wanted to try a chiropractor but was afraid that the chiropractor might do damage. He wanted to know what the risk was trying a chriopractor. With the patient in his office the MD called up someone he knew who was a chiropractor and asked him what his malpractirce insurance was a year. It was less than one tenth of what back surgeons were charged. My MD told his patient, insurance companies are very good at figuring out risk. “Insurance for chiropractors is a fraction of insurance for back surgeons. It’s up to you but it doesn’t seem very risky to try it.”
Cat purring has healing properties? I didn’t know that. Thank you! I just googled and found this:
https://wildnet.org/theres-magic-in-that-purr/
It’s so interesting. I had been ‘fostering’ a cat for a while when I broke my leg. When I came home from the hospital the cat jumped into my bed and curled up next to me. It had never done that before. It kept doing that until the stitches were out and everything was healed.
Absolutely!
covid taught me that conventional medicine is the last resort
and it has been fun to explore the alternatives
the malpractice insurance comparison is very telling
that is a God thing
Agree! My wife told me, just yesterday, that the latest pig transplant was rejected and failed. I'm holding hope for a robotic kidney. Anyway, I'd give you my place in line if you're in Colorado and the blood type matched.
Thank you for your service.
I spent moat of my twenties on hemodialysis. If you need to vent, I’m around.
*most
(Typo. Yay.)
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