It was somewhere in the fall of 1983. I was 5 years old at a wedding reception; on stage with a live microphone in my hand.

And I was singing “Mr. Roboto” by Styx.

Other than my polyester suit with bowl-cut hair, the day is sort of a haze.

I vaguely recall a whole roomful of people stopping their chit chat to watch the cute kid mangle the hit song. And although I haven’t ever seen it, there is videotaped evidence out there of the performance – recorded by a mammoth-sized predecessor of the camcorder.

It turns out that the song, taken from the “Kilroy Was Here” concept album, was supposed to be about music censorship or something. But I loved it because it involved a robot-looking dude.

Fast forward 23 years.

I don’t own the “Kilroy” album, and I’ve never bothered downloading the song. And I know that I won’t be in the audience when Styx performs it live on Aug. 10 at Musikfest. In fact, the closest I come to owning anything Styx-related is Cartman’s version of “Come Sail Away.”

But a few weeks back, I was hauling down the interstate on a roadtrip and fiddling through all the CDs floating around my car, when the disco-like electronics of “Mr. Roboto” started piping through my speakers.

And I remembered again how much I loved it.

But like most of my favorite songs from the ’80s and ’90s, “Mr. Roboto” will only live for me on the car radio.

This may be why the iPod will never truly kill the radio star.

Although I prefer to be the DJ while I drive, there are moments when I peak on all of my own music and like to surrender to the randomness of the tuner.

The radio still holds the power to thrust memories and reminiscent reverie on us when we least expect it.

Hitting the “scan” is akin to traveling back in time to a junior high dance.

And then there’s Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.” As sad as it may be to admit it, the 1981 arena-rock anthem makes me weepy and inspires me to take on the world. The one-two punch of those opening keyboards and Steve Perry’s vocals stops me every time it’s on the radio.

Do I have it in my personal music collection? Nope.

See, CDs and MP3s allow the listener to control their emotional reaction to music. The party mix, the sad love song playlist, the exercise selections. We can feel whatever we want to feel.

But the radio requires a sense of adventure and a desire to acquiesce to the ups and downs of emotion; the willingness to bounce back and forth in our personal history and uncover those musical memories we forgot we had.

That’s why we’ll never completely tune out the radio.

And for that, I say “domo arigato.”