The Eagles' Randy Meisner's story is a sad one

The previous post at this blog discussed how young music “reactors” on YouTube create channels that attract viewers to watch these reactors hear, ostensibly for the first time, various popular songs from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

It's a curious concept, one I felt drawn to in a strong way. After all, they were talking about songs I heard on the radio when I was growing up. 

Some of these “reactors” are music professionals — voice instructors, members of symphonies, classical music experts. Their reactions have made a big impression on me, and I find their observations are the most legitimate. 

The bulk of the other reactors, I gather, are simply people who might have listened to contemporary music growing up, “growing up” years that were in the 1990s or 2000s. And today, they are being challenged to give older music a listen and a chance to make an impression.   

One popular artist picked by the reactors to check out is country singer and legend George Jones, the subject of the previous post. After I activated the George Jones post, it occurred to me that another performance that has left many “reactors” in awe is a 1976 live concert performance of the Eagles’ Take It to the Limit, whose lead vocal was handled by band bassist and co-founder Randy Meisner.

Every reactor was stunned by how Meisner handled the song’s lead vocal. Several said they didn’t understand why Meisner didn’t do more lead vocals because they thought he had the best voice in the band.

The answer is that Meisner disdained the limelight, wrote way too few songs himself (the Eagles had a tightly observed practice that whoever wrote the song would handle lead vocals. And as it turned out, Don Henley and Glenn Frey did almost all the songwriting for the band).

I agree that Meisner’s Take It to the Limit performance in that 1976 live concert video is absolutely stellar. Sadly, as I learned only in recent years, it was his refusal to sing that song for an encore at a show during the band’s 1977 tour that resulted in his exit from the band.

By 1977, Meisner grew very frightened of not being able to hit the climactic high falsetto notes in the song’s final refrains. And his band treated that as a line in the sand that they couldn’t allow him to cross. 

Curiously, Meisner, who also had co-founded the country-pop band Poco in 1968 before joining the Eagles, left Poco after the band’s first album, Pickin’ Up the Pieces, because he was angry he wasn’t  invited to participate on the album’s mix playback sessions. The band responded by wiping away Meisner’s lead vocal on the title track and having the band’s drummer, George Granthan, re-record it. The band also used a dog to replace Meisner’s image on the illustrated album cover art. His bass work and backup vocals were kept on the recordings.      

Meisner attempted a solo career and assembled or joined a few ensembles in the ensuing years, but his time with the Eagles was clearly the high point of his musical career. He died on July 26, 2023, at age 77 due to complications associated with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. 

The image of Meisner at the top of this post is in the public domain and from his Wikipedia entry.

Finally catching up to a haunting George Jones tune

I was an avid follower of contemporary music for many years, certainly from early teens until my kids got to be young adults. 

I even worked as a DJ on my college radio station and for several years reviewed new record album releases for The Indianapolis Star. I grew to like pop, rock, blues, jazz, New Age and even classical music. But country music was not one of my faves except for a brief period in the early 1980s, and that’s a separate story not worth getting into here. 

For three months of summer 1974, I worked as a local news gatherer for WGLB AM-FM radio, which then was based in Port Washington, Wis. WGLB had a mostly country music format. The exceptions to the country format occurred in late afternoon and early evening. At 6 p.m., the AM station signed off, and the FM band would play pop music before signing off at midnight. 

I worked there mostly during daytime hours, so I heard almost nothing but country music. I’m sure it was there that I first heard the voice of George Jones, one of country’s biggest stars. His voice struck me the wrong way; the nasal tones underscored the stereotype I’d become familiar with about the genre from the little bit with which I was familiar. 

Fast-forward to 2026, when I stumbled across a George Jones song, He Stopped Loving Her Today, being reviewed by one of what seems like scores of very young YouTube personalities who are making a thing out of posting video reactions to what they claim are first-time listens to popular music from the 1960s, '70s, and '80s that they all say they had never heard before. 

First off, Jones was not the first artist I’d come across on one of these YouTube “reaction” videos. I’d looked in on multiple Pink Floyd videos (Comfortably Numb, On the Turning Away, Shine On You Crazy Diamond and Wish You Were Here are very popular among these reactors), and quite a few others videos too many to mention individually here. 

YouTube knows what viewers are watching, so if you watch one music “reactor” video, they’ll line up several others — either of the same song or other songs by the artist — for you to click on when you’re done with the one you’re watching. Suffice it to say I finally landed on a reactor’s video reaction to a George Jones song.

Jones’ He Stopped Loving Her Today was released in 1980, so I’m sure I heard it during that brief period in the early 1980s when I was paying attention to country. But the key here is ... I did not pay attention to the lyrics or its story at the time. I summarily dismissed it because, at the time, his nasal vocal tone turned me off.

But when I recently came across the tune from a “reactor” video on YouTube, I decided to stop and give it a listen. A serious listen. Boy, how 40+ years can make a difference. 

Jones sings the song tenderly, and I listened to its story closely, a tear-jerker that Jones relates in the third person. By the time I reached the critical lines near the end, I was a bit confused. I listened to the ending again, and I ascertained my suspicion. And it made sense. 

The reactor I chose for the watch/listen had the same momentary confusion at the same point I did. He then said he had heard beforehand that He Stopped Loving Her Today is widely considered the greatest country song ever. And I think the reason is that the composer(s) (it wasn’t Jones) wanted the climax to be subtle. And boy, it sure is.  

I then watched/listened to about a dozen other “reactors” who chose this song, too, to see how well they could figure out the ending. Only one or two did not get it or responded indifferently. Most stopped the song in horror or dismay during the same critical lines near the end as the light bulb went on. And they gasped in disbelief because, as many of them say, they did not see this coming. (I’m not getting into too much detail as a kind of spoiler courtesy; who knows, perhaps some readers of this post haven’t heard the song.) 

But I will join the crowd who think this might be the best ever country song. It’s sad, cleverly narrated and powerful.

Note: The photos in this post were pulled from George Jones’ Wikipedia entry, which states both images are now in the public domain. 

Soren Bebe Trio delivers a mix of judicious jazz with melodious New Age-like piano

This post represents another first for me: content that is entirely about music.

In my profile narrative on the right side of the main blog page, I explain how I usually use the blog to chronicle my periodic photo shoots. And for the longest time, I also used to mention how the blog could change directions in the future.

In the past year, I’ve made a few direction changes from the usual photo-shoot-chronicling, and today’s post is yet another deviation.

There have been so many bad things I’ve encountered using social media in recent years, so a fortuitous turn four months ago or thereabouts has had me wanting to share a story about how the discovery of contemporary musicians who are new to me has been a delight and comfort. And the process of how these artists, in turn, “found” me, might be the start of a social media trend.

An increasing number of fledgling artists or musicians who have tired of record labels who don't support them enthusiastically are using Facebook and Instagram (and perhaps other social media) to promote their work through self-produced ads usually containing sample clips of their music.

That’s how I learned about the Søren Bebe Trio, a Danish combo that features Bebe on piano and various musicians on drums and bass. I guess I can best describe their music as a melding of judicious light jazz with melodious New Age piano. My love of New Age piano — which goes back to the early 1990s — no doubt explains why I even elected to check out the trio’s ad when I first came upon it on Facebook in June. 

The ad was sampling the title track of the trio’s 2019 album Echoes.

If you are on social media and have seen or heard these ads, you know the musicians try to entice viewers/listeners by offering a free CD (of the artist’s choosing) if the buyer pays only a $5 shipping cost. When a customer pursues the offer and clicks on the link taking them to the purchase page, the artist further entices the buyer by offering them additional albums of their music at considerable discounts or in discounted packages. And the artist offers to sign the discs, for an extra couple bucks. 

I was suspicious at first, but the Søren Bebe Trio music was so appealing to me, I didn’t run away. The artists explain that their motivation to offer free and discounted CDs is to get more people to hear their music and to enable them to have a personal connection with those people.

In all honesty, the trio wasn’t the first artist I purchased from after coming across a teaser ad like this. That distinction goes to singer, songwriter and folk rocker Beth Bombara, from whom I bought the sampler CD and two others, and I liked them all.

That’s why I decided to trust what I heard in the sampler for the Søren Bebe Trio. I loved the Echoes snippet that Bebe put on his social media ad. The trio’s jazz elements most often are light, and the New Age elements give the tracks appealing melodies that are easy on the ear.

  

I took a big leap and ordered five of the trio’s discs, and I was not disappointed. So I ordered a sixth, seventh and eighth, and I hit pay dirt in that I liked them all! I'm listening to the trio as I compose this post. That’s Søren you see in the lead-off photo and above, which he provided and granted me permission to use.

The trio has now released eight CDs: Searching (January 2008), From Out Here (January 2010), A Song for You (August 2012), Eva, featuring Marc Johnson (August 2013), Home (November 2016), Echoes (May 2019), Here Now (November 2023) and First Song (May 2024). I’ve listened to them all multiple times now, thinking I ought to find something I could criticize. But I can’t.

It should be noted that Bebe didn’t always use the same accompanying musicians on his early albums. If he did, I’d mention them by name here, too. But his four most recent discs have settled into a combo featuring Kasper Tagel on bass and either Anders Mogensen or Knut Finsrud on drums/brushes. 

Bebe has a wonderful handle on putting melodious piano in front of his bass and drums/brushes background. And sometimes, the bass and drums remain silent, and I’m perfectly fine with that. At times when I’m listening to those solo piano tunes, I feel like I’m back in the 1990s when I “discovered” New Age piano on the Windham Hill and Narada record labels. 

When I use the New Age comparison to Bebe’s work I mean that in a highly complimentary way. And I took the trouble to say that right here because I know New Age often gets a bad rap from music snobs. But for me, New Age piano rarely disappoints. Off the top of my head, I’m thinking George Winston, Wayne Gratz, Michael Jones, David Lanz, Liz Story, Kevin Kern, Eric Tingstad, Joe Yamada and Jim Brinkman. 

Søren Bebe’s melodious compositions on piano are right up there in quality and appeal, but with a delightful addition of tasteful jazz elements.

I was so bowled over by the trio’s catalog of albums that I dropped Søren a note telling him so, and after a few days, he answered my email to thank me and added a personal note. So there you are: I went through the whole process that buyers go through when reaching out to artists through their teaser ads, and I can attest that at least in Søren’s case, the artist is true to his/her word about establishing a personal rapport with the listening public.

At the beginning, my favorite track in the catalog was Free, Free, Set Them Free from the A Song for You album. Its unusual offbeat syncopation piqued my interest, and I came back to it often. But lately, my favorites have been the title track of A Song for You and an entrancing cover of Sospiri, Op. 70, Sir Edward Elgar's World War I adagio for string orchestra. Sospiri is the last track on Echoes.

On Thursday — just yesterday — an excited Bebe sent an email to people on his group list to inform us that he had just learned that he had been nominated for his first Danish Music Awards in the category of Jazz Composer of the Year for the 2023 album Here Now. A winner will be announced Dec. 9.

“Regardless of the outcome,” he said, “I am extremely happy, proud and honored to be nominated. And then together with such insanely talented colleagues, for whom I have the greatest respect.

“But composing the music is one thing. Another and even more important thing is bringing it to life. And I owe everything to my two amazing band members, bassist Kasper Tagel and drummer Knut Finsrud, who do an incredibly amazing job, both on the album and at concerts.”

For some years, Bebe had composed music for ballet performers, but he said recently in a separate email just to me that he has stopped doing that for all practical purposes.

“I haven’t played for classes in eight years and have no intention of going back,” he said. “I occasionally compose and release a new song or two for ballet but don’t intend to do more full length albums as I want to focus on the trio and other solo projects. However I have released a substantial amount of records for ballet classes. More than 20 I would say, including sheet music. That’s all I did for quite some years to make a living before the trio music really took over.”

Bebe recently made available to people on his email list a CD from a recording he made 12 years ago with a five-member combo, and I also purchased it. The album, Gone, released in 2014, features Bebe and Tagel along with Jakob Buchanan on trumpet and flugelhorn, Julian Arguilles on saxophones and Helge Andreas Norbakken on percussion. 

Gone is another very fine work. It includes two tracks  — Maria and Again and Again from the Søren Bebe Trio’s A Song for You album — that I found interesting to hear with Buchanan and Arguilles’ horns in play. But I’ve had Gone only a short while — not nearly enough to grow completely familiar with all the tracks — and so far I prefer Bebe’s sound with the trio. Who knows, the horn-infused sound might grow stronger with me. 

I went through the same process with the next artist I fell for after checking out a social media teaser ad, Nicholas Krolak, an American, a stand-up bassist from Philadelphia. And I initially had the same experience as I had with Soren, although something about Krolak told me not go beyond the first disc. But I loved the music on that disc (except for three tunes that had vocals), and I dropped him a personal note with my compliments. He responded.

Krolak’s compositions on that CD are more traditional jazz, but not overbearing. It’s stuff I can enjoy. So I took a gamble and ordered three other discounted discs by him. Alas, when I listened to those three, I quickly understood why he had been referring to his repertoire in previous emails as “a sonic experience.” The second batch of discs were not nearly as appealing. Kind of hard to describe. They were approaching abstract because of their absence of structure and continuity.

I did the same thing with yet another artist named Andrew Colyer, whose Facebook teaser ad screamed New Age piano all over the place. I liked the tune he used for his teaser ad, and the disc it was on (I ordered just that one) was fine. But when I took a gamble and ordered two others, including a Christmas album, I didn’t care for either one. Like the second batch of Krolak CDs, Colyer’s two other CDs I ordered were “sonic experiences.”

If you’re inferring that “sonic experience(s),” at least in my case, means it’s not a good thing, you are correct. At least for my personal taste.

And so because of the experience with Krolak and Colyer, I’ve backed away from those teaser ads for the time being.

But I’m still thrilled I found Søren Bebe Trio. Play on, Søren!

The one Thanksgiving that was different

For many years, Thanksgivings had always been a very pleasant time for our family in Indianapolis to get together and enjoy a traditional feast and each other’s company. 

The one exception to this was 2016, when the holiday landed in the wake of what I felt was this country’s worst-ever decision for electing a new president of the United States. For the first time that I can recall, the subject of politics surfaced in our discussions at the Thanksgiving get-together that year. 

One family member who enjoys needling people started it by needling me because he knew I detested the Republican candidate, who I shall not name. It’s true; everyone in the family knew how I felt.

As a career newspaperman, for years I’d made a point to stay on top of current events and explore topics below the radar of most people. So long before Election Day, I’d formed an opinion on the 2016 Republican candidate for President based on:

*** His history of demonstrations of greed (even to the point of slighting people in his own family)

*** His insatiable appetite for the public spotlight

*** His failed casino investments and ensuing bankruptcies

*** His shafting of small contractors on his casino construction projects

*** His association with an attorney with lengthy known ties to the mob

*** A superiority/me-first complex perfectly fitting the classic definition of narcissism

I feel that such a person should never be installed in a position of power and authority as a national president. 

Did the Democratic candidate have her faults? Yes, but I also knew she would never do anything to undermine our democracy as I feared could happen with the power-hungry Republican. Another family member, bless him, mentioned his distaste of both candidates for the two major party candidates, so he took the Switzerland route and voted for the Libertarian candidate. As he explained at our Thanksgiving Day get-together, he also felt strongly about the Libertarian Party philosophy that promotes civil liberties, non-interventionism, laissez-faire capitalism and limiting the size and scope of government.

I happened to opine how taking such a course wasn’t risky in most elections, but the 2016 election was not like most elections. I explained why the election outcome presented an existential threat to the country, and that in this instance country before personal ideology should have been paramount.

The family member who started this ruckus in the first place told me the country needs to give the new guy a chance. By this time, the discussion had transitioned to mid-level argument, so the women stepped in and told us to nip it in the bud (apologies to Mayberry Sheriff’s Deputy Barney Fife). 

It might seem otherwise, but this whole lively “debate” transpired over just 15 minutes or so, and thankfully, calm was restored in relatively short order.

I do not feel smug today even though my worst fears in 2016 proved to be correct, given all that happened in the previous president’s administration. It was a toilet bowl term that began with large tax cuts for big corporations and the richest Americans, though the administration tried to masquerade it as a boon to average citizens. 

The former president’s botched handling of the COVID pandemic is also high up on the list of utter failures. But his signature transgressions were the false claims of illegal voting during the 2020 election and his tragic attempt to undermine democracy and violate the Constitution — not to mention the laws of the land — in the Jan. 6, 2021, attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. And make no mistake, that was an attempted insurrection, replete with loss of lives (plural). People today forget about the loss of lives ... or conveniently choose to overlook them.

This is all a prelude to the real purpose of this post, which is to share a current op ed column by John J. Pitney Jr., a professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College. From 1989-91, he was deputy director of research at the Republican National Committee.

His column appears below, topped by the headline that appeared with it Thursday in my local daily newspaper, the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer. He speaks with more clarity on the subject than I could have:

I’m a ‘Never Trump’ conservative who voted third party in 2016. Here’s why I won’t make that mistake this time.

Some right-leaning voters who oppose Donald Trump are thinking of voting neither for him nor Kamala Harris.

I understand how they feel. In 2016, I published an article urging Never Trump conservatives to consider casting their ballot for a third-party candidate. In the election that year, I did just that.

I regret writing that column. I regret casting that vote.

To people like me, Trump represented a repudiation of everything that Ronald Reagan stood for. But as a conservative and former GOP staffer who had never voted for a Democratic presidential candidate, I harbored reservations about Hillary Clinton.

Voting for neither Trump nor Clinton seemed to be a “safe” way to express disapproval of both. Most polls at the time showed her on track to win comfortably. It seemed reasonable to argue that a significant tally for a third-party candidate might check her liberal ambitions. After all, the number of votes for independent candidate Ross Perot in 1992 may have nudged Bill Clinton to accept bigger budget cuts than he wanted.

But the 2016 election did not go according to expectations. Despite losing the national popular vote, Trump squeaked into office by edging out Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College tally, claiming key states where polls were way off the mark.

Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson won 3% of the national vote, a high-water mark for that party. An exit poll asked his supporters whom they would choose in a two-person race. Though many said they would abstain, more picked Clinton than Trump.

We will never know whether Trump would have lost if more such voters had switched to Clinton. We do know what happened because he won. He blew up the federal debt. His incompetent handling of COVID-19 caused tens of thousands of needless deaths. He finished his term by trying to overturn an election he lost and instigating a violent rebellion against the government he had sworn to protect.

Trump turned out to be a catastrophe for our country. Hillary Clinton just was a candidate with whom I disagreed. I wish I had voted for her and encouraged others to do the same.

The next president of the United States will be Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, not anybody else. The election will almost certainly be close. We don't have the luxury of voting third party or writing in the name of a fantasy candidate. (In most states, those write-ins won’t even count.)

Currently, many states are likely to give a lopsided margin to one candidate or the other. For example, California will probably go for Harris and West Virginia for Trump. Voters in such states might think it is OK to skip the election or vote for somebody who can’t win, thinking: “What the heck, it won’t make any difference in the electoral count, right?”

That attitude is wrong in two ways.

First, “likely” does not mean “certain.” As we have already seen, the polls can err. Never Trump folks do not want to wake up on the day after the election to find that their wasted votes have helped him score a narrow upset in their state.

Second, the popular vote matters. Under any circumstance, Trump will almost certainly refuse to accept defeat. But if he loses big in the popular vote, as well as losing the electoral vote, it will be harder for him to claim that he is the people’s choice. The larger the margin, the weaker his claim.

For us Never Trumpers, as for everybody else, the 2024 election is a binary choice.

If you abstain or vote for somebody other than Kamala Harris, you effectively vote for Trump. Consider the consequences for our country. Don’t do something you’ll regret.

Smiles in shooter’s porch photos brightened neighborhood

It was a challenge for photography enthusiasts — both amateurs and professionals — to indulge their hobby or livelihood during the COVID-19 pandemic and state-imposed lock-downs in 2020 and 2021.

I played it extremely safe and did not venture outside the homestead except to seek life-supporting provisions such as food and fuel. Early on in the lock-down here in North Carolina, I dropped a note to the governor’s office asking if a photography enthusiast such as myself might be allowed to photo document the downtown Raleigh landscape — which I expected to be sparsely populated — as long as I observed proper social distancing.

I received no response to my inquiry. So rather than risk a few variable consequences for proceeding with my idea, I stayed home.

This post evolved after Kelley Jordan Schuyler, a professional photographer in Indianapolis, went on the Facebook page of my old neighborhood, Garfield Park-South, during COVID to pitch an idea to help bring some smiles and cheer in the neighborhood to help distract from the gloom and doom: She offered to walk through the neighborhood on a near-future evening to take portraits of residents with their families and/or fur buddies on their porches — and, most important — at a safe distance separating photographer and subject in observance of the community social distancing admonition.

Kelley was a relatively new resident of the neighborhood. I thought hers was a brilliant idea, and the neighborhood responded immediately and positively, so she did a walk-through on May 3, 2020. Not long afterward, she posted some of the photos on the Facebook page and offered to do additional portraits for anyone still interested.

Kelley pitched her idea by characterizing the portraits as “porch photos,” but in most instances, the subjects — as you can see from some of the samples in this post — were not under cover of the porch. They are seated on steps of or to the porch. I certainly understand that; a shooter trying to photograph anyone standing or seated on a porch would have to get close up, which would compromise needed social distancing space in the pandemic.

Kelley no doubt chose early evening for her shoot appointments to allow for almost uniform lighting —shade. She started at 6 p.m., which in Indianapolis meant the sun was low in the sky — which in turn means it was behind buildings, thereby preventing any chance of throwing unwanted white key light on people’s faces if they were facing the western sky.

I contacted Kelley to ask if she would welcome a little splash about the project on this blog, and she agreed enthusiastically.

“I'm delighted by the positive response our neighbors have had to this idea,” she said. “I couldn't tell if people would be skeptical about it, but it looks like I have a lot more work cut out for me — there’s a lot more interest!”

With her permission, I sprinkled this post with a few shots from her first wave of results, posted at the Facebook site Thursday. I found them uplifting. I didn’t want to steal all of her thunder, though. If you’d like to see the full gallery of first-round of porch photos at her site, just follow the link I dropped into this sentence.

What can friends do to help those mired in bad times?

For weeks now, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has had me seriously contemplating mortality. Mine, my close family and friends, and ... humanity.

It wasn't bad enough that state authorities were asking -- and in some cases, requiring -- people to stay at home except to run the most urgent errands (mostly to replenish food and medicine, but also fuel for the automobiles).

But then today, while I was already mired in anxiety and concern, I learned about the drug overdose death of a woman from my former home of Indianapolis. Thing is ... she was only in her 30s, and I first made her acquaintance when her family would bump into mine while we watch our sons play Little League baseball in the summer on the Southside of Indianapolis. Ashley was younger than her brother, Derek, who was close to my oldest son's age.

Derek and Ashley's parents were good people, so we enjoyed running into them and having someone to talk to on the grandstands as our boys played on the field. Joey and Derek even spent nights at each other's home on several occasions. And there, alongside her parents, or playing with other small children, was little Ashley.

That goes back almost 30 years now, and we lost touch with Derek, Ashley and their parents not long after the boys moved on from Little League.

The familiar phrase "Oh, but for the grace of God go I" is running through my head repeatedly. From what my daughter tells me, Ashley had two sons of her own, and they are still pretty young -- preteens at the oldest, probably.

So what is to become of them? Ashley's boys lost their father figure -- Ashley's husband -- two years ago. Also to a drug overdose. And I'm told they all lived with Ashley's parents not far from my former home in the Garfield Park neighborhood. So they have their grandparents. But they no longer have their mother. And that's the part that's killing me. Mothers are so vital in a home. I lost mine 43 years ago; that's a lot of time to go motherless, but the difference here is that I was a few years removed from living in my parents' home. Still, the "home" was not the same after mother died.

I don't know all of Ashley's story, especially the why or wherefores behind her drug usage. We all have our minefields to dance around on that perilous path through life. Whether it's addiction, medical ills, domestic violence, financial difficulties, depression. Whatever it is, there are people and professionals out there you can talk to -- and possibly even help you -- so you don't have to do it alone.

Just be careful how and who you give such advice.

I say that because just yesterday, in a casual and brief email exchange with a guy with whom I go way back -- to high school years, in fact -- I learned that he apparently still wrestles with some issues that date to his first assignment in one of the military branches, a period during which he feels he was mistreated and handled unfairly.

The subject came up when I asked him if he was discouraged that I tried to correct some issues I had came across in a published project of his. I didn't want to discourage him with what I intended to be helpful and constructive heads-up because his project is actually quite impressive and has made lots of people happy. He said he wasn't discouraged; he explained that he is such a perfectionist who easily frustrates that when he slips up, something akin to flashbacks from that military assignment tends to mess with his mindset.

So I rolled the die and responded with a risky suggestion -- that if he hadn't already done so, that maybe it would help if he talked to a professional counselor about it. I told him I did so after my divorce nearly 30 years ago, and found that it helped me not beat myself up with guilt, frustration and unsettling feelings of failure.

In my heart, I had a sense that with him being a military person, my suggestion probably was not going to be welcome advice. And indeed, I got no response. I'm thinking it was his way of telling me that "What you suggested is so ridiculous that I'm not going to dignify it with a response."

OK. And so it all begs the question ... what can we do to help people in these predicaments? Maybe just listen?

Other ideas anyone?

Slippery Noodle Inn CDs take me back to some fun nights of live blues in Indy

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.