Unfortunately, the famous "27 Club" just claimed a new inductee, and it got me to thinking about its seven main members. The 27 Club is a group of musicians who found overwhelming fame early in life, but whose future was cut short due to their death at the age of 27. It may be a result of my odd fascination in the graves of the famous, or it could be a strange coincidence, but I've seen the final resting place of 4 of the 7 main members of the club. Well, one of them is sort of a stretch, but I'm still going to count it. Here's my list:
Jim Morrison - France has national holidays almost weekly over the summer, and during one of them (Saint Somebody's day) my good friend Bruno and I hopped onto line 3 of the world's best subway and headed to nearly the end of the line. Pere Lachaise cemetery is a fascinating place full of fascinating dead people, including the lead singer of The Doors. The stories behind his death and burial are very interesting and worth a few minutes at Wikipedia, or perhaps a few minutes in Paris. Yet another good reason to go back to France.
Jimi Hendrix - Before I said yes to the job offer in Seattle, I considered how awesome it would be to live in the very city that spawned the world's greatest guitarist. Needless to say, there were very few days between our move to Seattle and our pilgrimage to Jimi's final resting place in Renton, Washington. Don't worry, this shoddy paragraph is only a preview of an upcoming post that will have some tacky title like "Jammin' with Jimi", or "Cold as Love". Our Jimi Hendrix grave experience was pretty groovy and you'll hear all the electric details, in full swirling color, once I finally get around to it.
Kurt Cobain - I'd say Kurt Cobain had more influence on post 80's music than any other person. Western Washington is chuck-full of Cobain history, as he was born and raised in Aberdeen, died just south of Seattle on the coast of Lake Washington, and is currently floating about in ash form through the creeks and rivers of Olympia, Washington. Since we've driven through Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle loads of times over the last two years, I'm considering this 27 Club member as officially visited. One of these days I'll make my way to the house in which he "commit suicide" just so I can say I've been there.
Janis Joplin - Shamefully, I really don't know much about Janis Joplin, except that she died at the age of 27 only 16 days after Jimi Hendrix. Her ashes were scattered from an airplane into the Pacific Ocean, and I've been to the Pacific Ocean, so I'm counting it. It looks like its time to go put a Janis Joplin CD on hold at the library.
My 27 Club grave count will likely stay at four, as I'm not enough of a fan of the remaining members to visit the graves of Brian Jones and Amy Winehouse in England. Sara and I are dreaming of a nice little drive through the South, during which I think it would be cool to stop and see what's left of Robert Johnson in Mississippi. It would be super cool to write a book about famous gravesites. It would be just macabre enough to grab a reader's attention, and historical enough to hook the nerds. Maybe it would end up getting produced into a super famous cable television show, which I would be able to exploit as host in order to get a lot of free trips to the middle of nowhere. At the rate I'm blogging, I could easily get that written by the time I retire.
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