Tag: Ohio

Midwest Midnight

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The following was written for National Public Radio in response to their request (for listeners) to answer the following question: What music has changed your life? This post first appeared in October 2007.

An Akron Goodyear Factory Building… now gone.

Growing up in Akron, Ohio, working-class rock-and-roll music seemed to find its way into nearly every home—ours was no exception. And while Dylan, Springsteen, and Mellencamp permeated the airwaves, the one song that stirred me to my soul (and still does to this day) was written and performed by a singer and band that fell just short of national stardom status—Midwest Midnight by The Michael Stanley Band.

Stanley once said that Midwest Midnight was, “…the most honest song I’ve ever written,” and it was the first song that spoke to me about my hometown—or at least that part of the country that I called home. Stanley’s anthem left me feeling that there was no denying who I was or where I was from—no matter where I chose to live following my high school graduation in 1978.

It’s funny how one can know the words of a song by heart after all these years and still only possess a vague notion of the song’s intended message—such is art. Today, the lyrics of Midwest Midnight are still abstract to me and at 47-years-old, I would have thought this little mystery would have been solved by now. Perhaps I really don’t need to know what Stanley was trying to say because his song has woven its way into the fiber that defines me, which is understood, but not necessarily articulated.

Living in the wide-open spaces that straddle the Wyoming and Montana border, I consider myself a Westerner now. And while my taste in music has expanded exponentially over the years, every now and then my MP3 player will select Midwest Midnight in the shuffle mode and I’m instantly taken back to the world of Northeast Ohio—its overcast skies, industrial skylines and its proud, working-class ambience.

Excerpt from Midwest Midnight
Why can’t she see what she’s doing to me
If that bandstand girl only was here
And I’m living the dream, getting lost on the screen,
doing Presley in front of the mirror…
And I’m hanging around, getting high on the sounds
of the ladies and electric guitars
Cross a double yellow line to who knows where
with six sets of glory a night in some bar…

(CHORUS:)
Midwest midnight
Ten thousand watts of holy light
from my radio so clear…
Bodies glistening, everybody’s listening
as the man plays all the hits that you want to hear.

Postscript: Michael Stanley passed away on March 5, 2021 after a short battle with lung cancer. His last performance was in March of 2020 at the Akron Civic Theatre just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Here’s a video of Stanley singing another early song and a favorite, The Rosewood Bitters, recorded in his basement on April of 2020.

In 2019, WKSU’s Amanda Rabinowitz interviewed Stanley for his Cleveland Arts Prize Lifetime Achievement Award. LISTEN HERE for the interview.

My Air Disaster Nightmares

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Final Approach at San Diego.

The recent controversy and mystery involving the safety of the Boeing 737 Max jetliners had me thinking the other day. I’m unsure how many years it’s been happening, but if there has been one reoccurring dream in my life, it has to do with plane crashes—big plane crashes.

These nightmares of aircraft disasters are never the same. Sometimes I’m in the plane, other times I watch one go down just over the horizon and then see the bright light of the explosion just above the tree line with a big plume of smoke rising after. When I’m in the plane, there’s never any question about what is going to happen. A wing or engine becomes detached and the plane will slowly roll over into an inverted nosedive. I don’t recall ever hitting the ground in this scenario as I always seem to wake myself up.

I often wonder if these dreams are premonitions to something about my future, or are they simply a reference to my childhood—where I was always watching the planes fly over our house on their way to the Akron Municipal Airport—a little over a mile away. Often it appeared that the various overhead aircraft would barely clear the trees on Wirth Avenue (the last high point) before the airport. The Goodyear Blimp was a frequent overhead visitor in those days too.

I’m writing this now just in case I should perish in this way. Maybe someone will come across this writing and say, “See, he knew he would go this way!” Maybe I should have written this years ago. That said, it’s never felt as if my demise is certain in this particular manner either. 

For the record, I first flew on a plane in 1978—traveling from Columbus to Phoenix via TWA on their 727s and 707s back in the day, with a stopover in St. Louis—and have flown numerous times since. I always get a bit nervous a few days before getting on board, but once I’m in the plane and we are taxiing hard down the runway for takeoff, there’s no sense of fear. It’s just exciting and fascinating, especially if I have a window seat.