Another Top 40 hit came in 1983 thanks to “My Town,” off the album You Can’t Fight Fashion.

“For the first time ever, I felt we were in a position of having a little bit more power than we had before, where maybe we could call a couple shots,” he says.

But the band’s record label only offered a six-month extension on their expiring record contract instead of another long-term deal.

Stanley turned it down, hoping for a better offer. The label responded by promptly dropping the group.

“I was definitely shocked,” he says. “Not only was it not a counteroffer. It was, ‘Well, OK then!’ They pulled all support from the single and the album.”

Although MSB managed to release two more albums regionally, continuing to record and tour without label support was financially impossible. The band had operated like a company, providing a measure of security for its now-seven members and four roadies by distributing earnings in weekly paychecks.

“I could have just paid everybody when we played some nominal amount and kept all the rest,” Stanley says. “And I probably could have retired years ago. But that wasn’t what I wanted, and that wasn’t what was called for. I mean, it was a band. Everybody from me on down to the last guy on the road crew was invested in the thing. We were going to sink or swim together.”

Simply getting paid if and when they worked, he adds, wasn’t an option for family men with mortgages.

MSB decided to disband on their own terms with a 12-night stand at the now-defunct Front Row Theater in Highland Heights during the 1986-1987 holiday season. Stanley describes the experience of playing the last show as downright horrible.

“As each song went by the wayside that night, you [thought], Oh, my God. There’s only, like, five songs left, and then I’m done. I’m not doing this anymore,” he recalls. “I had no idea whatsoever what was going to happen after that.”

Once again, Stanley parlayed a sideline gig into steady employment. During his last year with MSB, local television station WJW had hired him to do a series of music specials. After the band broke up, WJW offered him a position as a feature reporter on its locally produced edition of the syndicated PM Magazine.

Stanley was elevated to co-host in November 1987, after his predecessor quit the evening before the station’s annual Thanksgiving Day parade telecast. He received a call late that same night ordering him into the co-host seat to help provide live coverage of the event.

Stanley had no interest in parades, let alone rising early on a holiday morning to cover one in freezing temperatures. But the promotion turned out to be a choice job that took him around the world, one for which he won a couple Emmys.

“The very first trip I went on, we went to St. Martin in the Caribbean and stayed at a clothing-optional resort,” he says. “I thought, This is just a great gig! They’re paying me to do this!”

By the time the short-lived follow-up to PM Magazine, Cleveland Tonight, ended in 1991, Stanley had begun his foray into radio with a weekly new-music show and series of commentaries on WMMS. Then-program director and afternoon drive-time disc jockey “Kid Leo” Travagliante subsequently hired him to take over the midday shift. But a physical altercation with the program director who replaced Travagliante after his sudden departure for Columbia Records ended Stanley’s tenure before it really began.

“He ended up coming over the desk at me,” Stanley recalls. “We just kind of rolled around until somebody broke it up.”

In 1990 he received a call from WNCX’s program director. He asked if Stanley had ever thought about going on the air again.

“I thought it was something I’d do for a couple of years, until I got my sails straight and saw which way I wanted to go,” Stanley says.

The job, however, retained its appeal. The 3-to-7 p.m. hours gave Stanley ample time to record and perform. Six months after MSB broke up, he had begun playing live with a group of musicians billed as Michael Stanley and Friends.

Even when he wasn’t performing regularly, he continued writing songs. In 1993, he released his first post-MSB effort with the group the Ghost Poets. Three years later he released his first solo album in over two decades, Coming Up for Air.

“Once you get a bunch of songs together, it’s like, Well, that’s all well and good. Now what are you going to do with them?” he explains. “You can just put them in a drawer or on a cassette. Lots of people do. But it was like, Well, I’ve got a certain history here and a certain possibly viable audience. Let’s see.”