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The Beach Boys – day by day, year by year, presented in a very compelling diary format that really gets past some of the overblown mythos about the group! Author Badman goes for a "just the facts" sort of approach – and lists key days in the group's career from the 60s onward – with most of the details given to important stretches before 1970, but some key information from later decades too. Each entry is dated, with specific information on what the Beach Boys were involved in on that day – recording, rehearsing, touring, etc – with a surprising amount of vintage photos and other bits to support the text. Perhaps most compelling is the book's frequent use of Musicians Union sheets for recording sessions – listing session players and their details (including, oddly, social security numbers!) – which really helps illuminate the way that the records were being made. 399 pages, softcover, with black and white images.

Some of the greatest albums in rock and roll are those that were never released – including some that finally saw the light of day after decades, like the Beach Boys' Smile! This book really gets at that fact beautifully – showing how, although never issued, some of these key creative projects really represent the ongoing struggle of rock music in the music business – the push and pull between different forces, and the resulting crash when musical moments never come to be! Each chapter tells the tale of a different album that didn't make it – David Bowie's Toy, Seal's Wonderland, and other projects by The Beastie Boys, Beck, Chicago, Ray Davies, Adam Ant, The Jungle Brothers, and others – almost a musical version of the comic book What If? There's also a final chapter on other almost-rans, including a few that might just make it – and the book has a nice breezy style that's nicely journalistic at times. 319 pages, softcover.

A heavy duty gospel music encyclopedia – named for the hymn Uncloudy Day and chronicling the careers of hundreds and hundreds of gospel artists and personalities from 1900 to the present day! It's a wonderful resource, put together by Bil Carpenter, who has written about soul, pop and gospel music for Goldmine, Living Blues, The Washington Post and other esteemed journals. It's all here, from 4 HIM to Debbie Zschech, as award listings, poll results of gospel lovers and more. Paperback, 515.

A great overview of the sound of surf music on the west coast – a surprisingly detailed volume that really fills in a lot of gaps in our knowledge of the genre – which can often be a bit oblique, due to a lack of studio and session details on the original records! Kent Crowley traces the genre from the start – looking at pre-surf guitar styles, then focusing on the big waves of the scene as surf evolves strongly over the 60s – and even looks at some later manifestations of the style too. The book's got a nice batch of black and white photos in the middle, and is 256 pages, softcover.

Pat Martino tells his story – a wonderfully long run of jazz experience that starts in the heady days of the 60s soul jazz scene, moves into key psychedelic modes, suffers a bit of tragedy in later years, then springs wonderfully back more recently! Pat's got help from a co-writer on the book, who helps take his deeply personal musings, and give them some key narrative focus – laid out in a way that also introduces comments on Martino from some of his contemporaries and fellow guitarists – all of whom further illuminate the musical changes over Pat's years in jazz. The book is hardcover, 192 pages, and features some black and white photos.

A really heavy duty book on Led Zeppelin – one that's as big as an oversized volume of photos, but also includes a rich amount of text, too! There's a great array of vintage black and white photos in the book – lots of candid and backstage images we've never seen before – all laid out in support of Keith Shadwick's detailed history of the group's tremendous rise – details that start in 1968, and run through their great run of albums in the 70s. The book's a whopping 320 pages in all, oversized, in a soft cover, and very heavy!