Classic rock really rocks me today...then fizzles out

I had a particularly long and grueling day at work, it wasn't necessarily bad, it just wore me out and it was such sweet relief to finally get in my car and drive home.

My normal habit on the nightly drive home is to listen to NPR, generally WUOM 91.7 out of Ann Arbor, because that NPR station has a nice clear FM signal. However, the night before I'd been listening to the MSU basketball game on the way home, and hadn't bothered to change it to nice, staid, calm, relaxing NPR. Instead of the BBC NewsHour (or whatever is on at 6:00 PM), I was greeted by The Beatles' "The Ballad of John and Yoko." That was a pleasant surprise. I stopped across the street from work for gas, and when I finished it was John Lennon singing "Watching the Wheels," a song I didn't much like when it came out in 1980 but a song I've come to appreciate much more the older I become. I turned up the volume a little on that one. It soon became obvious that this was a Lennon tribute music block when "Instant Karma" came on. This is another Lennon solo tune that has grown on me over the years, though I still don't really care for Phil Spector's production. Still, I was diggin it enough to crank up the volume just a tad more as I approached the intersection of Cedar Street and Mt. Hope on the south side of Lansing.

The Lennon tribute ended and, holy shit, the next sound I hear is the burbling synths of The Who's "Baba O'Riley." I hadn't heard this song in I don't know how long but it was just the catharsis I needed. I thought back on when I first discovered The Who's album Who's Next back in college and how I used to crank that mother to 11 so many times I can't count. After a long day at work, the slashing Pete Townshend power chords and manic Moonie drumming were EXACTLY what I needed. I blasted my '97 Volvo's speakers so loud I'm surprised they didn't blow out. I soon learned that simultaneous air guitar and air drumming in the car aren't conducive to good driving, so I ceased before I crashed into someone.

The power of music is funny and it's amazing. I still get the same chill down my spine that I got as a 19 year old kid, and I'm talking literal chill down my spine--not merely a figurative chill down my spine, whenever I hear Townshend's powerful guitar riffs in "Baba O'Riley." There are plenty of musicians I loved when I was young and continue to love to this day, but I don't think any musician ever spoke to me, on so many different levels, as Pete Townshend and The Who. Their music was so emotionally raw, visceral, and muscular (though The Who are certainly not without a tender side) and the Townshend's lyrics spoke to the combination if righteous anger and emotional vulnerability that I felt then and continue to feel, to a certain extent, today.

Well, as often happens with classic rock stations, they can't continue to play the music I love for too long. Eventually they run out of steam and play old clunkers that I didn't like when I was a kid and still don't really care for now. Billy Squier's lame "The Stroke" completely destroyed the mood set by "Baba O'Riley." (I always thought Billy Squier was nothing more than a sleazeball. Yeah, I get it Billy, "stroke" is a double entendre. How witty. AC/DC do the same thing but the difference is they rock and you're just boring). By the time Lynyrd Skynyrd's "What's Your Name" finished, I was just about ready to turn it back to NPR. (Couldn't they have at least played a good Skynyrd song like "Tuesday's Gone" or "Simple Man"? Nope.) After Skynyrd, the DJ promised Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House" coming up next. Awesome, I thought...then, when the heck did the Heads become "classic rock"? Well, I guess the song is 27 years old.

Before Talking Heads came on, I had pulled into my garage, and my evening with classic rock was over.