Friends of long standing will know how desperate eager we have been, since Live Fast, Die Young: Misadventures in Rock & Roll America was published in the UK last year, that it should become available in the US. It’s a book about rock and roll America, after all. Many kind souls have responded to our repeated begging appeals for help in making that happen.

So we’re thrilled to be able to tell you that your hard work has paid off. Our little tribute to GP in book form – a tale of two men on a coast-to-coast search for the soul of American music – will be available in bookstores and interweb sites everywhere on that fine continent from 1 April 2012! It’s a little way off, but we hope you’ll agree it’s worth the wait. (If you can’t wait until next year, or you live in the UK, you can always buy it here.) And you can be quite sure we’ll be reminding you again nearer the time. Quite sure.

As always, thanks for your support and encouragement. If Live Fast, Die Young is new to you, go here for some blurb about it, or watch this video of Chris and Joe reading the prologue:

For now though, we’ll leave you with some words from nice people who have already read it:

“A thoroughly enjoyable ride through the American musical wilderness. Live Fast, Die Young brings out the inner geek in every rock and roll dreamer.” Zane Lowe, BBC Radio 1 

“Heart-warming and hilarious … Bill Bryson meets Nick Hornby.” Country Update Magazine

“Not only a joy sui generis, but also – and better yet – a joy to be shared by reading aloud. Mere satire is cheap; the blood in these pages is more authentic than any Nashville approximation of Americana.”  Stanley Booth, The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones

“A book that shows how your obsessions can shape and change your life. Excellent.”  James Dean Bradfield, Manic Street Preachers

“I howled myself silly. But like me, readers of Live Fast, Die Young will find their aching sides soothed by the heart-warming rhythms of mutual and musical harmony pulsing from two human hearts at their best.” Diann Blakely, Harvard Review, BookPage, Nashville Scene

“The thinking man’s Dumb & Dumber.”  Mike McCormack, Universal Music Publishing

A little birthday gift to Joe. As regular readers of this blog – and of Live Fast, Die Young – will know, gift exchanges between us come with a certain level of pressure attached. Not for us the latest box set of The Wire or monographed handkerchiefs it seems – it was a birthday gift exchange, after all, that started a coast-to-coast quest for the spirit of rock and roll America. Anything not pregnant with significance just won’t do. But times being tight, and therefore lacking the funds to buy something made out of gold, I had to get creative. I brainstormed, thinkercised and waterholed.

The title of the resulting video gift (below), like so many things to do with Missing Parsons and its ‘output’, is a reference to Bill Drummond’s work in progress The Smell of Money Underground. The eagle-eared among you will recognise the song in the first half as Bob Marley’s Redemption Song. To find out exactly how all his relates to our story – well, yes – you’ll have to read the book. (For a video of just the music from this clip, go here. Best enjoyed on headphones, better to facilitate emancipation from mental slavery.)

There’s a kind of wearisome inevitability about two film lovers publishing a book on May 4th and announcing it with a bad Star Wars pun. Please believe us when we say that Live Fast, Die Young: Misadventures in Rock & Roll America is much funnier. Promise. We’re thrilled – literally beside ourselves (er, each other?) with glee – to tell you that the book is available in stores from today. If you prefer to shop online, Amazon are still offering a 25% discount (US peeps go here for more info on the best way to get your copy). To celebrate, we’re offering you the chance to win a personally signed copy. Have a watch of the opening chapter below, then read on for how to enter:

For your chance to win, all we ask is that you share this video with your friends. If you arrived here from Facebook, hit ‘Share’ under the post for this video on the Missing Parsons page and give us a thumbs up so we know you’ve passed it on*. If you’re a Twitter follower, just retweet one of the many tweets containing this video. And if social media aren’t your thing, just share this blog post with your friends via email and then let us know in the comments box below.

Last entries accepted at 14.00 BST on May 11th. We’ll pick a winner from Joe’s very large bespoke hat at the book launch (which starts at 18.00 that day) and announce the winner here on the 12th. Good luck!

*If you do enter, please do share the video or angels will die in heaven. Some naughty peoples are entering without sharing, which frankly isn’t cricket. (What’s the emoticon for ‘not angry, just disappointed’?)

Additional Brownie points, but absolutely no prize whatsoever, will be awarded to anyone who can spot the badly hidden film reference (not Butch & Sundance or Star Wars) in the prologue video above. Clue – it’s near the beginning and end of the clip.

The book goes to print today, and just in the nick of time the final cover design has arrived. Chris got so excited when he saw it that he let out a small wee. And cover art that makes a man wee should be shared, we hope you’ll agree.

Here’s what to look for when you’re browsing your local book store for Live Fast, Die Young: Misadventures in Rock & Roll America on May 4th. Or if you’re ordering from the interweb, they’ve sent you the wrong book if it arrives and doesn’t look like this (click on the image to see it full size):

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If we sound a little too excited by the prospect of an actual book with an actual cover with our actual names on it, containing actual pages with words on them that we actually wrote – well, it’s because we probably are. Thanks again for your help making it happen – helpful Parsons can find out if they have qualified for the ‘Most Helpful’ title in the acknowledgements at the back of the book. Naturally we’re keeping quiet about who they are for now, winky smiley face.

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