The Missing Column

This should have appeared a few weeks back, but for whatever reason didn’t.

Did you know that there exists a 27 club? Club is perhaps the loosest term, because it is more a collection of musicians who die at the age of 27. I can’t imagine having much fun at a club full of dead musicians. Really I’ve been to plenty of clubs where there are lots of living musicians and not had fun.

Anyway inside this club you would find the corpses of Brian Jones from the Rolling Stones, Kurt Cobain from Nirvana, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison of the Doors. All of them dead, some from mysterious circumstances, but all have died at the age of 27. Don’t believe me? Have a look at Wikipedia – the 27 Club even has its own page.

The reason this is bothering me is because I turned 27 last week, which I’m sure probably is of no concern to most Evening Express readers. Until I was 27 all I had to bother me and make me feel like I’m wasting my life were the successful people younger than me like Brittney Spears. Now that I’m 27 I suddenly realised that if I died, in possibly mysterious circumstances, all I’d leave behind were some online columns for the Evening, a couple of very funny YouTube videos, two chapters of a children’s book and 47 editions of my really rather fantastic free to download podcast (www.originalfm.com/sunday-showcase-on-original-106-640406).

How does that compare to the back catalogue of Hendrix or Morrison? Robert Johnson, who pretty much invented modern music died when he was 27, admittedly he did sell his soul to the devil at some rural Mississippi crossroads at midnight so he could have mastery of the guitar. The only crossroads I’ve ever waited at at midnight was the one George Street and Hutcheon Street. And even then all I was waiting for was the Green Man so I could go to the bakers. Had the devil been there he could have had my soul for some stovies.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m not sure if I done enough with my life. When my dad was 27 he was already married, mortgaged and had had me. I’m nowhere near marriage, don’t earn nearly enough to buy a house and have trouble feeding and watering myself.

The world has almost ended twice since I started this column. Once when the Large Hadron Collider was switched on and again now where we do seem only another bank collapse away from scratching each other’s eyes out for a loaf of bread. I think it’s a safe bet to say that in the next wee while the world is going to be taken over by robots built by mad men and in fairness I don’t expect to live. I’m not very good at fighting and no one cares enough about me to share their bin scraps. I’m going to spend the remaining time we have on the earth finishing my book. Granted there’ll be nobody around to read it but still it’s a legacy of sorts.

In a wee addendum to this posting I was talking about the 27 club with Producer Dave yesterday and he said, ‘at least if you were to kill yourself it would be understandable, unlike Kurt Cobain’.  Cheered me right up.