Missing Parsons the band have been busy again. Here’s another taster from the longplayer, a song called What’s In A Name? (Genevieve). This one’s an homage to all those artists who gave country a groove - in particular Mike Nesmith and Little Feat – and an excuse to break out the wood blocks, bongos and much underrated vibraslap. It’s cut to footage from the first leg of the Live Fast, Die Young road trip from LA to Joshua Tree.

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The album is available on iTunes, Amazon or your favourite digital music retailer. Listeners in countries that support it can listen on Spotify. Hope you like it – there’s more information about the band here. Be first to see new Missing Parsons videos by subscribing to our You Tube channel.

Several people have asked who we are and how Missing Parsons works. So here’s a short lesson in three easy steps. Missing Parsons is a book, a band and a blog. We think of all three things as being expressions of what it means to be a fan of music – mainly (but not exclusively) Americana. If you love music – especially if you love it a bit too much – you’re a Parson too. Welcome along! Gram Parsons is the inspiration for what we do because he was all about turning people on to the music he loved.

You’re reading the blog right now, so that just leaves the book and the band.

1. The book.

Missing Parsons the writers are Chris Price and Joe Harland. We work in radio, and met when we made programmes and devised the playlist for BBC Radio 1. Joe still works there as an executive producer and Chris, after a few years devising music strategy for MTV, runs a radio production company and media consultancy called New Slang Media.

Together we’ve written a book about our search for the soul of American music. It’s called Live Fast, Die Young: Misadventures in Rock & Roll America, and you can buy it here. (US Parsons go here for details of how to get your copy.) If you’d like to find out more about the book, have a read of this synopsis, or read the prologue on Amazon.

So the book side of it looks like this:

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2. The band.

Missing Parsons the songwriters are Chris Price and Simon Kilshaw. Simon is a lecturer in Music Technology at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. He’s the technical and production brains behind the band – it’s Simon who wrote the program for playing the Theremin on a Wii (listen to it on our cover of If I Needed You) and he’s also working on another exciting evolution to Missing Parsons’ technology presence, of which more soon.

Chris and Simon met at school and have played music together for years. We recorded a soundtrack to accompany the journey described in the book, and the first track on the album, Live Fast, Die Young – can you see what we’ve done there? – has become our theme tune. We wrote the songs, sang and played all the instruments with a little help from more talented Parsons on the bits which were too difficult to do on our own (crikey the pedal steel is hard).

You can buy the album from iTunes, Amazon or your favourite digital music retailer, and if your territory supports it you can listen on Spotify.

So the band bit looks like this:

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So far so good. Now, as we were never very good at Venn diagrams at school, the next bit is probably ill advised. But here goes. Put another way – don’t they say ‘expressed as non-overlapping sets’ or something? – Missing Parsons, represented as a whole, currently looks like this:

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Simon and Chris are on the left writing the music, Chris and Joe on the right writing the book. We’re working on ways of making Missing Parsons look more like this:

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More details as we have them.

Hope that clears things up for now. Thanks again for being part of the Missing Parsons community. We get so much enjoyment out of your comments, suggestions and feedback. If you’re a recently welcomed Parson and your appetite has been whetted (whet? whit? what?) there’s more on our Facebook page (where we have most fun), You Tube channel, Twitter stream, No Depression page and MySpace profile. Phew!

All the best,

Chief Executive Parsons Chris, Joe & Simon

Missing Parsons

Several of our esteemed American friends have asked about US availability of Live Fast, Die Young, so we thought it worth putting together a simple guide. As yet we have no publishing deal in the US, so there are two options for getting hold of your copy:

1. While stocks last, buy your copy from the Missing Parsons shop. We have a limited number of *signed* copies available for purchase from within the US. Cheaper than ordering from the UK and personally signed to you! We also have Missing Parsons t-shirts and physical copies of the soundtrack album for those that like to touch, hold and caress their music.

2. Order the book from Amazon.co.uk. This will be shipped from the UK, so the postage will be slightly higher than your usual Amazon orders, but at the time of writing there’s a 33% discount which goes some way to covering the difference.

We want to make it as easy as possible for our friends in the US to get hold of Live Fast, Die Young. Our Research & Insight department (Facebook) tells us that roughly 75% of the Missing Parsons community is American, and we would love the book to be made available in your fine book stores and upstanding interweb sites. Until then, please consider one of the other options above.

As ever, thanks for your support, Parsonage and friendship.

Chris & Joe

Missing Parsons

… or ANIMALS: You’re Making Humans Look Bad. New bloggings from Chris on Wildcats, Frisbee Dogs, Racin’ Pigs and Heavy Petting.

I’m in Valdosta, Georgia.

You might know Valdosta as ‘Title Town USA’, an accolade handed down by viewers of ESPN in 2008 because of the city’s unrivalled championship football pedigree. Or maybe you know it as ‘Winnersville’ on account of Valdosta High School’s six national championship titles – ‘the winningest high school football team in the country’, as ESPN put it. (That high school football is so huge in America still amazes me; almost as much as the fact that ‘winningest’ is considered acceptable scripting for television.) Not bad though, for a city with a population of 40,000 – Valdosta apparently punches way above its weight. If you’ve seen the film or read the book Friday Night Lights, Valdosta Wildcats are like the Permian Panthers, only better – because they win.

Or you might know Valdosta by its more homely and horticultural name – Azalea City – on account of the profusion of purple, flowering shrubs found in its parks and gardens. In recognition of this, Valdosta was recently voted ‘bloomingest city in South Georgia’ by Home & Garden Television.

No, you’re right. It wasn’t. But they do have an Azalea Festival every year in the city’s lush and pine-shaded Drexel Park, a springtime celebration of the blossoming azalea and another chance – if you need one – to fill your face with fried dough and candy so sweet it makes your fillings tingle. This Saturday we were looking for just such an opportunity.

The Azalea Festival was a mix of British farmers’ market – all handmade soaps and homespun basketry – with some sideshow attractions of the American country show variety thrown in for added interest: racing pigs, Frisbee dogs, petting zoo, that sort of thing. (I still have to suppress an adolescent snigger whenever I pass a petting zoo. Where I’m from, petting is something you’re banned from doing in public swimming pools, not something you do to small animals. The phrase ‘petting zoo’ conjures images for me of caged, amorous couples locked up by stern-faced lifeguards.)

Bang in the middle of all this was a wide, raised stage, tantalisingly empty on first passing but with a large PA system promising untold excitement if we stuck around until show time.

An hour later we passed again, just as a line of people, all dressed in matching white T-shirts, black jeans and cowboy boots was filing onto the stage. Thumbs hooked through their belt loops, they formed themselves into four rows of five and waited for the music to start. Garth McGraw, Travis Brooks or some such thundered from the speakers. They plodded left in time to the music, then briefly right, then turned to the back and clapped in unison. Now right, then briefly left, then an extended right heel out in front. Clap. Repeat.

Can someone please explain the appeal of line dancing to me? I hesitate to ask what the point of it is, because let’s face it what’s the point of football or cycling or singing or just dancing at all for that matter. But what’s the point of a line dancing display? What makes line dancers think other people want to watch them doing it? Line dancing is so close to what humans do in the course of their daily lives – that is, propel themselves by means of their legs in a variety of directions – that it barely qualifies as dancing at all. I do something very close to line dancing just moving around the kitchen, only without the clapping (unless I’m feeling especially pleased with my porcini risotto). When a group of people collectively display such a staggering lack of artistic ambition, you can’t help but feel a little short changed. Inviting people to watch you line dancing is a little like selling tickets to a monster trucks display and then staging a series of synchronised three-point turns. Only much, much less interesting.

And more to the point, what hope is there for a line dancing display at a festival which also lists Frisbee dogs and racing pigs among its attractions? You would think that when applying for your pitch it pays to check out the competition first. (‘Shit Bill, are you sure you wanna go ahead with this line dancing display? They got Frisbee dogs and racin’ pigs.’)

What consenting adults get up to in the privacy of their own community centre is of course entirely up to them. And if pacing around in close formation to bad country music is your thing, then good luck to you. But like petting in the shallow end of your local swimming pool, doing it in public makes people uncomfortable.

In fact, here’s a suggestion. Let’s outlaw line dancing in public – make it a new commandment even – and replace it with synchronised heavy petting at next year’s Azalea Festival. Feedback welcome.

(And – ahem – you can buy Live Fast, Die Young Amazon now at a 33% discount.)

Some radio musings from Joe which didn’t quite make it through the copy edit, but we liked it so here it is in mini-blog form:

The CD player had started to skip again. We put the new Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy album on. It raced past in a clicky thirty-second montage. We put on Jeff Buckley’s Grace. A twenty-second glitchcore remix wasn’t what we had been hoping for. There was no option but to flick on the radio. Train’s ‘Raindrops of Jupiter’ blared from the speakers.

‘Search,’ said Chris reflexively.

Crunky hip-hop. Maybe Chamillionaire. Could have been Lil’ Jon.

‘Hmmm. Search again.’

Somewhere on the FM dial Daniel Powter having a ‘Bad Day’.

‘One more for the win.’

‘Sweet Home Alabama’ by the most successful vowel-less band of all time, Lynyrd Skynyrd.

‘Yes!’ dueted driver and passenger.

But as the song hit the middle eight the DJ faded it out. ‘Okay, we got Steve on line one. What’s your problem, buddy?’

‘Hey Bill. I’m trying to change the oil filter on my Torino, but it’s stuck fast. I tried lube, tried wrenches and I’m getting nowhere. Any ideas?’

‘Sure Steve, no problem. You got an old belt you don’t mind getting dirty?’

‘Yeah.’

‘OK. Take the belt, tie it real tight around the filter and yank it hard in a counter clockwise direction – that’ll get it started. You can do the rest by hand.’

‘Thanks, Bill.’

‘You’re welcome, Steve. Good luck with it. This is Van Halen.’

You know how every once in a while you hear a song that is so brilliant, so how-come-that’s-not-been-done-before magnificent, that it stops you in your tracks? Well, this may be the geekiest thing I’ve ever confessed, but sometimes radio does that to me. Chris is the same. Every once in a while you hear a link, feature or stunt that knocks you flat. This was one of those times.

‘Genius!’ squeaked Chris. ‘It’s like “Gardeners’ Question Time” for petrol heads.’

‘With some classic rock thrown in for good measure,’ I said. ‘Incredible.’

Van Halen reached the middle eight, and again the song was faded out. Bill again. This time Dave was struggling to fit a new muffler on his Chevrolet. With Bill’s help, he wasn’t struggling for long.

‘Thanks Bill! I’ll give that a shot right now.’

‘Good luck, Dave. Hope it works out for ya. Ooo-kay-eee, this is Led Zeppelin.’

To help explain what I found so incredible about this show, let me give you a little background. UK media is obsessed with audience research. Absolutely fixated. Because this research offers insights into the lives of its audience, and those insights lead to brainstorms and think-a-cises which in turn lead to TV formats, radio shows, magazines and books.

Let’s imagine that, quite by coincidence, ten separate women wake up one morning and fancy an orange for breakfast. Later that day they each meet a representative from a research company who asks about their eating habits. They say in passing, quite reasonably, that they enjoyed an orange that morning. This data is fed into the company’s research software which identifies an ‘emerging trend’, and before you know it marketing wonks throughout the land are assembling their best people to see how they can capitalise on the new ‘Citrus Mum’ phenomenon.

But the Holy Grail is finding something deeper than mere insight. The real pay dirt is stumbling upon a ‘truth’. A truth, at its simplest, might be ‘people enjoy watching football live on the telly’. At its best it might tap into some previously unnoticed human behaviour. However, even with millions spent every year on trying to find new ones, researchers find truths about as often as scientists discover new elements.

But Bill, it seemed, had beaten them all. His warm, personal, caring style didn’t scream ‘focus group’, which is why I think the show was his idea and not that of a media conglomerate. And what was his million-dollar truth? Simple: ‘On Sunday mornings me and my buddies fix our cars. When one of us has a problem we help each other out. And we love rock music.’ That’s why I loved Bill’s show. It was the truth. And you don’t get that on the radio every day.

You can pre-order Live Fast, Die Young on Amazon now at a guaranteed 25% discount!

Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top is known to play guitar with a Mexican peso coin instead of a plectrum, as it gives him a sound that no plastic pick could achieve. Queen’s Brian May uses an old money sixpence piece on the grounds that it has perfect rigidity for maximum control. (I just checked his Wikipedia page, which states that ‘he is known to carry coins in his pockets specifically for this purpose’. The temptation to change this to ‘specifically for buying things’ was almost too much resist.)

This weekend I went one better than both of them:

Or rather Joe did. For some time now we’ve been throwing ideas around as to how we should spend the modest advance we received from our publisher for Live Fast, Die Young – something we can look back on in years to come and remember the first time (hopefully not the last) that somebody paid us actual cash-money to write words. Joe, as you can see in the blog post below this one, thought long and hard about a suitably literary memento, and bought a hat. (Your guess is as good as mine – a thinking cap maybe? Stop the words escaping?)

But his track record for buying other people gifts is rather better. For my thirtieth birthday he rallied a posse of work colleagues who clubbed together and bought me the nicest, most thoughtful present I have ever received. I’ll say no more about it here than that it’s a piece of art by a highly respected ‘art terrorist’ we both love, and has pride of place on my living room wall. The real telling of that story is reserved for the book, which – fingers crossed – you’ll enjoy when it comes out in May (although by all means pre-order it now). Suffice it to say that it has been one-nil to Joe in the thoughtfulness stakes for a long time.

I hadn’t decided what my gift to myself would be. A nice writing pen perhaps, or a new laptop. Then Joe went and bought me this, as a thank you present for the joyful experience of writing the book together:

I like to write and play guitar. That’s a solid gold plectrum engraved with … well you can see what it’s engraved with. If you can think of a more perfect gift that Joe or anyone else could have bought me, I’d like to hear about it. I don’t mind telling you I had to fight back a tear when he gave it to me on Sunday. Don’t mind telling you one bit.

Thank you, author and friend.