I'd gotten a job at the Cleveland Press. I'd expected to start as a reporter, a cub reporter. I expected to be like Jimmy Olson rather than Clark Kent.

What I ended up as was the Press's new "Rock and Roll Critic". Basically it was because the paper was fighting for readers. It's rival, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, was slowly pushing the Press into extinction. The paper's bad luck was my good luck, because I ended up with a weekly column.

My first assignment was to review Neil Young's "Live Rust" album. Not a bad assignment, considering I was a Neil Young fan. And since he was in Cleveland on tour, I got my first celebrity interview.

David Bowie came to town shortly thereafter. I wasn't much of a fan, but the sheer power of his stage appearance won me over. He'd managed to harness his "new wave" and merge it with a dance beat that made his album "Let's Dance" something truly memorable.

I was able to see three separate Grateful Dead shows that first summer working at the Press. I never knew what being a Deadhead was like until then. I'd listened to the albums, but the albums don't tell a quarter of the story behind a Dead show. Jerry Garica was an amazing person to talk to about just about anything.

And if you wanted to find a party band, you didn't need to look much further than Lynard Skynard. These guys could party! Being with them was like hanging with the bikers I'd met back in Dayton. That plane crash crippled them, but they went on.

I reviewed albums and interviewed rock bands. I met people like Sting and Bono. Cleveland as a great place to be a "rock reporter". Pink Floyd's concert at the Cleveland Stadium, Crosby, Stills, and Nash at the Blossom Music Center, it was a fantastic year.

Unfortunately, the Cleveland Press, an institution in Cleveland since 1876, closed in 1981. I was out of a job.

Emily was only one at the time. Chrissy had been staying home being a Mom. Now she had to go back to nursing to keep things going. I became the house-husband. I wasn't very good at it.

I needed to get a job.

Since I had been the Press's rock'n'roll guy, I knew a good number of the local radio personalities. More than a few told me I should try my hand at radio work. They said I had the voice for it.

Hell, the Plain Dealer didn't want me.