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That's right, I am talking about birthdays. I think you can tell a lot about what phase of life someone is in based on their birthday celebration. When the kids are little they have nary a clue of what's going on, then it's all about the presents, then somewhere around when they hit double digit ages it's the center of attention AND the gifts.

I have an old friend who just had a birthday (this past Saturday), he stops by this site regularly, you have probably read his posts. He too is moving into the next phase, many of you will recognize it. We shouldn't be too quick to judge for all of us sooner or later we all will be donning the rubber pants and ordering the mashed carrots.

Happy Birthday Stu

What do these things have to do with each other? I will tell you. You don't bring them up unless you are ready to go deep. People don't take these things lightly. Case in point;

A few weeks ago I wanted to make a new CD to play in my car. I have a great MP3/CD disk changer in my car and I listen to a lot of music. I was in the mood for some "rock" so I started picking songs from my library and dragging them into a list. After about 20 songs I asked myself "how many should I pick?" 100 was a nice round number. One CD can easily hold that many MP3s. "Why not pick the best 100 rock songs?" And so it began.

I started filling my list. The next day I told a colleague at the office of my plan. We share many similar positions on music. He immediately fired a volley of questions about my selections and potential selections. As I tried to answer it became clear this was not as simple as it sounded. Gears were turning.

The next day, my friend at work announced he too was compiling a list of the 100 greatest rock songs. We decided to work independently. We discussed our venture with other cube dwellers, they were intrigued, another list was spawned. A date was set to review the lists over pizza and beer. Every day no conversation passed without mention of what was and wasn't rock. Intellect was questioned, some aspects of one's manhood were challenged. Lists were being honed.

We sat down together at my house over suds, slices, CDs, iPods and printouts. We compared lists. Initially the conversations went like this, "Oh, you put that song that high?, I have . . . in that position". Then the talk moved to "so where is .... ? are you crazy?" then " that sucks, that's the kind of stuff my little sister listened to in 8th grade", " do you know what rock is?!?!?" Of course in the end everyone agreed that my list was clearly superior and asked if they could revise their list with some of my selections.

But that wasn't the end of it. Since then I (and even Linda and the girls) mentioned our little endeavor to others. Sometimes it fell on deaf ears but sometimes you got back the Gatling gun of questions, "is ... on it?" "can you have more than one song from the same artist?", "what is your #1" "... has to be in the top 5" and on and on.

So why am I telling you this? Because I am going to show you the list. That way when someone brings it up in polite conversation you can speak with authority that you have indeed seen the top 100 ROCK songs of all time. What was that? You had a question about one of my selections?


Top 100 ROCK songs