Rock ‘n’ roll is awesome. And ridiculous. Need proof? Spend a day listening to classic rock radio in 2021.

I spent two days doing just that, toggling back and forth between Northeast Ohio’s twin titans of FM classic rock: 97.5 WONE, otherwise known as “Akron’s Home of Rock & Roll,” and 98.5 WNCX, aka “Cleveland’s Classic Rock.” I listened while working. I listened while driving. I listened while cooking. I listened morning, noon and night, from the time I got up until the time I went to bed, and by the end of my immersion, my ears, my mind, my entire being was comprehensively fried.

Moving back to Northeast Ohio, I was excited to reconnect with the radio. Growing up here in the ’80s and ’90s, we had one of the best radio markets in the country from left to right on the dial, and even here in the Clear Channel/iHeartRadio era, Cleveland radio still rocks – mostly. There’s a lot of crap to wade through, but there are diamonds in the rough, too, including my recent discovery, WKHR, a post-war big band/jazz station that operates under the illusion that rock ’n’ roll never happened and the Greatest Generation is and was exactly that. Finding WKHR, which is freeze-dried in a pre-Alan Freed pop universe, was a breath of fresh air after hearing firsthand how homogenized North Coast radio had become since I moved away 20 years ago. Having caught the last gasp of its golden age in the late-’90s, when stations like WMMS – which helped break Bowie and Rush in the states and played a big part in Springsteen’s rise outside of Jersey – still had distinctive personalities, I was hoping at least a sliver of that rogue radio spirit remained, especially after 10 years of freeform bliss by way of Radio Boise. Instead, I found stations that once resembled trusted friends had been given McRadio makeovers, too, and there’s little left to distinguish the history-rich Cleveland radio market from, say, that of metropolitan Orlando. You can still trust these stations to play the music you know and love, but listening to commercial radio in the age of algorithms requires a conscious acceptance of the formula, a concession to an AI-generated, monochromatic experience that favors mind-numbing repetition over mind expansion.

Regardless of construct, radio is built to be your companion. The radio is there for you – to lift you up, to pump you up, or in the case of the Stones, to start you up. It’s there with an invitation to come sail away or a warning to run like hell. It’s there to help you escape, perhaps on a magic carpet ride, and it’s there with a shoulder to cry on and a song that says, “I understand what you’re going through because I’ve been there, too.” Drowning in the tedium of a long drive or a 9 to 5, the radio can be the life preserver you need to make it to the other shore. It is so important to the human experience that there are multiple songs about the joy and power of the radio, and when those songs get played on the radio, they sound amazing on the radio. I doubt there will ever be a song that romanticizes listening to Spotify, and even if there were, there’s no way it would hold a candle to “The Spirit of Radio.”

More than any other format, classic rock radio plays to the comfort of the familiar and our tendency, especially as we hit middle age, to wax nostalgic for the glory days that pass us by. The term “classic rock” has always been nebulous, and as the decades of music history pile up, its boundaries have greatly expanded to include everyone from Grateful Dead to Green Day, Pink Floyd to Pearl Jam and Styx to Soundgarden. As a 43-year-old white male, I’m the target demographic for this seemingly hodge-podge throwback soundtrack, one that’s programmed using highly-refined analytics to make me stay put, even as I suffer through the commercials to get the Led out once again. At least, that’s what they want me to do. But even before I embarked on my two-day immersion, the close proximity of WONE and WNCX on the dial – one at 97.5, one at 98.5 – made it too easy to switch stations whenever an onslaught of ads overtook my eardrums.

So what made me do this, anyway? Mainly curiosity. Classic rock radio has always been repetitive by design, but after checking in with WONE and WNCX after moving back, these blue-collar rock radio mainstays seemed much narrower in focus and far less adventurous than I remembered. I selected two nonconsecutive days – a Thursday and a Sunday – to include both weekday and weekend programming in my small data set. I started each day on 97.5, switching to 98.5 at the first commercial break and staying there until the next break took me back to 97.5, and so on throughout the day and evening. If both stations were playing commercials at the same time – which was often – I’d stay put wherever I was until the music started back up. For the sake of the full experience, I stuck it out through all the DJ banter, all the goofy filler material and all the songs and artists I can’t stand – mercifully, there were no Billy Joel run-ins – and by the end of the two days, I had cataloged, with help from my daughter, Magnolia, whenever I was driving, more than 150 songs. Several songs, including Eric Clapton’s “Cocaine,” Robert Palmer’s “Bad Case of Loving You” and George Thorogood’s wretchedly bad “Bad to the Bone,” I heard twice. Led Zeppelin, Van Halen and Ozzy Osbourne tied for the most appearances by artist with five each; if you count the one Black Sabbath song I heard, Ozzy was No. 1 overall with six spins.

Over the two-day period, my thoughts and observations were as random and disjointed as the programming I consumed, and here’s a sampling of them:

–Listening to classic rock radio, one must prepare for jarring tonal shifts. And a bit of existential dread. At 7:20 in the morning, the transition from Pink Floyd’s “Breathe” to ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man” is particularly unpleasant but nonetheless poignant, ironic and painfully relevant to the drone of work life. Sitting at a rush-hour stoplight scarfing a Sausage McMuffin, delicately brushing chemical egg crumbles off a pair of discount slacks, hearing a line like “hanging on in quiet desperation” just might be enough to break one’s gentle spirit on a Monday morning.

–“Intruder,” the instrumental intro to Van Halen’s version of “(Oh) Pretty Woman,” sounds like the start of a really great Bauhaus song. It’s amazing it doesn’t fall apart as it segues into the Roy Orbison standard, but in its own weird way, it works perfectly. Also, it should be federal law that “Hot for Teacher” gets played on every classic rock station in the country before the start of every school day.

–Turns out I like Supertramp a lot more than I thought I did, and I didn’t think I even liked Supertramp. But here we sit at the dawn of … something. I’m not really sure what, but it may involve a man perm. Or satin shirts.

–Lizard King or no, it’s hard to get your mojo rising at 10:47am on a weekday. Especially when all you can think about is a late-morning nap.

–I love me some heartland rock and I like a Mellencamp fix as much as the next Rust Belt romantic, but I don’t ever want to hear “Jack and Diane” ever again. Also, that “suckin’ on chili dogs” guy on YouTube is equal parts hero and villain.

–Boston sounds best on the radio, in short bursts. I once brought home a hand-me-down copy of the self-titled first album and was colossally bored before the end of the first side. They’re the same songs you hear on the radio, but for some reason an entire album of Boston is too much to take in one sitting. If you’re the type who thinks even “More Than a Feeling” is more than enough Boston, I advise you to steer clear of the Spinal Tap-worthy “Smokin’” on Side B.

–I almost stayed in the truck to hear the rest of “Behind Blue Eyes.” That’s what radio is supposed to do to you.

–On Thursday night, I went to bed with the chorus of Billy Squier’s “The Stroke” pummeling my brain on an endless loop. I woke up Friday morning with “Bohemian Rhapsody” playing in my head and that was a little better, but the birdsong outside my window was the pleasant soul cleanse I needed.

–Otherness is in short supply in the world of classic rock. Of the 150 songs I heard, only seven were by females or bands with female members: Joan Jett, Pretenders, Fleetwood Mac and two each from Heart and Talking Heads. The lone Black artist I heard, Jimi Hendrix, made one appearance.

–“Back on the Chain Gang” is a perfect radio song, and I can’t describe the feeling of hearing it in Akron on an Akron radio station with an Ohio driver’s license in my wallet for the first time in 17 years, so I’ll just say it’s good to be home.

–Even Rush fans have to admit “The Trees” is pretty lame, but then again, convincing hardcore Rush fans that there’s anything at all lame about their beloved Canadian power trio is as easy as convincing them they need at least one pair of colored socks in their wardrobe for special occasions.

–Bon Jovi’s “Runaway,” which I heard three times – more than any other song over the two-day period – lodged itself in my brain Sunday evening and was still there Monday morning. It was neither a good way to fall asleep nor a good way to wake up. Shoutout to the birds outside my window for another sonic redirect.

–I’m an avid nostalgia tripper, but I’m glad I’m not stuck in the past like the guy in “Summer of ’69.” My life, thankfully, did not peak at 17, and I’m grateful every day that I didn’t end up with my high school sweetheart.

–The Rolling Stones’ “Beast of Burden” is a terrible song. Also, the younger version of me was wrong about “Miss You” – the older version of me now acknowledges that “Miss You,” not “Angie,” is the last great Stones song.

–I’m a happily married man, but hearing “Landslide” still makes me want to curl up in a ball in a corner and hold myself. And find Billy Corgan and give him a hug.

–I don’t ever have to listen to Guns N’ Roses ever again. The 14-year-old me hates hearing that, but the next time I get welcomed to the jungle, the 43-year-old me is hitting the Seek button and going hunting for Supertramp.

My findings, while far from comprehensive, did result in a conclusion, and what I found was, despite the fleeting pleasures of a lunchtime all-request block or the endorphin rush of a dashboard-pounding singalong, experiencing music in this fashion is thoroughly exhausting, and after two days of it, I’ve had my fill of classic rock radio for a while. But I’m sure I’ll get back in the saddle soon enough, because sometimes classic rock radio gives me just what I needed. When it’s too hard to handle or I still haven’t found what I’m looking for, all I have to do is turn the page and ramble on, because life is short – or in other words, all we are is dust in the wind.

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