Thomas Filip:  

Life: Still crazed but slowed somewhat due to advancing age. Began playing bass guitar in '65 with various school (and non-school) friends in various groups, inspired by The Kinks, Animals, Stones, Yardbirds and other British Invasion groups. "Graduated" to six-string in '72, learned my stuff and played in a serious (well, semi anyway) rock 'n' roll band from 1975 (when I bought my first Les Paul) to 1980 then shortly thereafter moved to CA and have lived here since. Fought a battle with Cancer (NOT the astrological sign!) in '97 and won. And how the f**k are YOU??? My only child, a son, crossed over the Rainbow Bridge on August 21 '03 due to complications from Leukemia: a hospital-acquired fungal infection called Rhinocerebral Mucormycosis (Google it) which has a 90+% mortality rate. By the time they diagnose it you're already screwed. It didn't help matters that the doctors initially diagnosed sinusitis and wasted over a week treating him for same, so by the time they actually figured it out he had lost an eye to it and it ate him up, literally. He'd been in remission for over two years so I thought he'd beaten it. He was 18 and had just graduated from High School two months prior, having made up over two years worth of missed school plus his regular Senior year in one school year. He had earned a full scholarship at a prestigious culinary academy in San Francisco and was going to become a chef. I miss him terribly; he was the light of my life and my reason for being, and without him life doesn't seem to be quite as important any longer. He would have been 21 on April 28 of '06 and had long planned to go to Las Vegas to...Expand for more