<H2>Slippery Noodle Inn CDs <BR>take me back to some fun nights of live blues in Indy</H2>

It has been over a year (a year and a half, to be precise), since I last added to this blog, and so much has happened in the interim. There are so many places I'd like to go for my homecoming post here, and unfortunately, too many of them are upsetting (think in terms of today's politics).

So instead, I decided to start with something upbeat. In the mail the other day, I received the three-disc milestone anniversary CD produced and issued by the Slippery Noodle Inn live blues bar in my former hometown of Indianapolis. (I moved to Raleigh, N.C., two and a half years ago.)

I moved to Indy in October 1978, and I sheepishly admit that I came upon the Noodle (as the locals refer to it) late. I did not set foot into the oldest, continuously operated bar in Indiana until 1992. An news associate working at the Indy bureau of the Associated Press (which worked out of the same Star-News building where I worked) tried to coax me and a small group of Star co-workers to go there two years previous, in spring 1990, but for whatever reasons, that never materialized.

When I finally landed there on that cold January weekend night in 1992, the venue was crowded and

live music was pouring from its two weekend stages -- one in the front, the other in the back. I saw the familiar Slippery Noodle Inn logo (right) -- outlines of the Blues Brothers -- for the first time.

After a quick swing to check out the back stage area, the person I was with and I sat in the front stage area. There, where Gordon Bonham and the Kings of Rhythm (which is what Bonham's band at that time was called) were performing. I was immediately taken by this "live blues music."

Over the next 10 years, I returned to the Noodle several dozen more times (at least), often for the last set of the two bands performing on Friday nights. I would head to the Noodle at 1 a.m. on Friday nights, because that's when my late shift at The Star ended, and the beauty of that timing, I learned early on, was the Noodle ceased collecting the $5 weekend cover charge after 1 a.m. (That would change some years later, but I digress).

The Noodle made a decision in those 1990s, when I was routinely dropping in, to enter the CD production business under the label Slippery Noodle Sound. It released albums by some of its best-known performers -- David Morgan, Gene Deer and the Blues Band, Gordon Bonham, Blue Lou and the Accusations ... and even the legendary Yank Rachell, Indy's best-known classic blues icon, who did a CD, Pig Trader Blues, in collaboration with Morgan.

The establishment also released, in 1993, a 30th anniversary live double CD featuring performances of the best-known bands to populate the stage in the 1990s. For reasons only Noodle/label owner owner Hal Yeagy knows, he released a second volume live CD the following year (1994) and a third volume before the end of the decade.

Slippery Noodle Sound took a long hiatus from the recording business after that, until 2013, when it wanted to do something to mark the 50th anniversary of the purchase of the bar by Yeagy’s parents. Hal sprinkled in pictures of his family and the bar in a montage inside the 50th anniversary CD package (above). A few of the performers who were featured in the live CDs of the 1990s — such as Harvey and the Bluetones, Gene Deer and Gordon Bonham — were still alive and kicking, and appear on the 50th anniversary CD released in 2013.

I'm listening to the 50th anniversary CD as I type this, and boy ... it puts me back in those seats where I could get as close as I could or wanted to enjoy those wonderful performances. Good times.