The idea of The 27s is seeping into our pop cultural consciousness. Teenagers, college kids, and bloggers increasingly discuss the 27-phenomenon, and you can look it up on Wikipedia or The Urban Dictionary.

Although the fully-illustrated "The 27s: The Greatest Myth of Rock & Roll,"
which is only months away from publication, will be the first book to tackle
rock's most fascinating history, the idea of The 27s, a few recent projects
have used the 27s as a backdrop or premise.

The 27 Club premiered at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival in New York, but
contrary to what you'd expect, it's not a biopic about these famous musicians. That notion lingers like a contextual backdrop for the fictional death of rocker Tom Wallace. The plot takes his band mate on the long road from Los Angeles to Missouri on an errand to deliver a message left on a Post-It note to Wallace's authoritarian father.

Then there's Paul McComas' novel Unplugged, published in 2002, which is about 27-year-old rocker Dayna Clay. A the height of her career she battles depression, attempts suicide, fails, and journeys incognito to the South Dakota badlands. Her disappearance fuels record sales and she has to choose between her past life in the spotlight and her current life living in a seemingly happy lesbian relationship at a remote ranch.

Another recent creative work on the subject is Ian Halperin's off-Broadway
play 27 Heaven (Halperin is also the co-author of two books that postulate
that Cobain's death was in fact a murder), which dramatizes Kurt meeting
Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Janis Joplin up there. John Lennon and Bob Marley aside, these four musicians are easily the most revered figures among rock's premature departures, yet they're really only a small part of The 27s saga. Sure, they're the most famous of the bunch, but fame is only one of many parameters that define artistdom. To paraphrase Hendrix and Cobain biographer Charles Cross, the complete roll call reads like a mini history of rock: bluesman Robert Johnson; Chris Bell of the influential power pop band Big Star; Dave Alexander of proto-punk group the Stooges; Pigpen, co-founder and the only showman of the Grateful Dead; songwriter extraordinaire Pete Ham of Badfinger; D. Boon of Cali-punkers the Minutemen; crooner Jesse Belvin; Hole's Kristin Pfaff, sound creator Jeremy Ward of The Mars Volta- and the list continues.

Not all are famous musical icons, but every one of them is a first-rate exponent of their style, whose influence lingers on till today. It is this story that Eric Segalstad and Josh Hunter craftily tell through words and illustrations in their forthcoming "The 27s: The Greatest Myth of Rock & Roll," due to be published later this year.

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