Column: Radio is a beautiful thing

In an age where everyone has an iPod and burning a CD is as easy as pie, FM radio does not get the respect it deserves.

I always forget how good the radio is until I have one of those experiences in which the greatness of the radio is made abundantly clear.

After my radio experience Saturday, I have nothing but respect for the beauty that is FM radio.

Some friends and I were on a three-hour drive back to Bloomington from a day-long road trip. We were exhausted, and no CD was hitting the spot.

The ride down had been entirely CD driven (Sly & the Family Stone and Eric Ayotte were favorites), but as we neared our destination we put on local radio to find ourselves in the middle of a John Lennon tribute weekend.

This station was running, alphabetically, through the best work of the Beatles in honor of what would’ve been Lennon’s 70th birthday. The irony was they kept playing Paul McCartney songs, and they even played a few Wings songs, a rock group affiliated with McCartney, not Lennon.

On our way back we turned on the radio to see if these shenanigans were still going on. A live recording of McCartney’s 1980s hit “Coming Up” informed us that this bizarre Lennon “tribute” was indeed still underway.

Instead of trying to pick out a good CD for our tired drive home, we changed the radio dial and began our musical journey.

We kept finding songs we all enjoyed, mostly classic rock and old pop songs. Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” came on, and all five of us started singing along and swaying. What happened next, however, was absurd.

As we drove down the highway to the end of “Dreams,” one of the most legendary car songs of all time came on the radio. The song of course was the perfect song along with “Midnight Train to Georgia.” We all went absolutely nuts. We were dancing as actively as five people in a Pontiac Grand Prix could.

Although you can’t top Gladys Knight & The Pips, the rest of the drive was still spectacular. We rode that radio dial right into classic song after classic song with Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” and Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl.”

We were reminded of the power of Steve Miller Band, Doobie Brothers and the soulful grooves of Sergio Mendes.

The radio led us to all kinds of places we would never have gone. We listened to all five minutes of Great White’s cover of “Once Bitten, Twice Shy.” No one could remember that Ian Hunter originally sang the song, and we hoped the DJ would tell us.

We listened to about two minutes of Native American flute music because I thought it was an intro to a Jethro Tull song. And we listened to an entire Garth Brooks song because, why not?

One of the best moments was singing along to “Small Town” with Johnny “the Coug” Mellencamp as we indeed drove through a small town.

This moment was entirely overshadowed because the next song was “Bohemian Rhapsody,” a song that easily stands next to “Midnight Train to Georgia” in the car song hall of fame.

My friends and I have a tradition of yelling this Queen song at the top of our lungs while walking to and from parties, so naturally we knew every line, how to sing it and who sings what part.

It couldn’t have been better. We followed Freddie Mercury and the gang through all five minutes and 55 seconds of car rock perfection. We swooned over the piano-driven slow parts, blasted through the rocking parts and went nuts about the hard guitar section right before the end of the song. 

We couldn’t top that moment. We knew it and the radio knew it. As we approached Bloomington, about 10 minutes away, the radio gave us a relaxing Bright Eyes song to bring us home.

We were back in the hipster world of CDs and iPods, a world where you miss out on late night DJs reminding you how great Cream is or how sometimes an old Lynyrd Skynyrd song hits just the right spot.

Without listening to the radio, we wouldn’t have had the great times we did, and we wouldn’t have heard Blue Swede’s “Hooked on a Feeling.”

That would’ve been quite a shame.