Rock Family Trees

You read the sleeve notes on albums, and take the booklets that come with decent CDs into the bog while you meditate. You have heated discussions with mates - with yourself - about who played marimba on the 1972 Afro-Silesian classic A BSA Killed My Marmoset. You need to read Rock Family Trees.

They're nothing new, so apologies to those who know them already, but I never fail to be awestruck by the work involved in their creation. Pete Frame drew and wrote them by hand and they start life as huge great things covering a large table before being shot and reduced down for print. They're obsessively detailed and you can lose yourself in them for hours.

The breadth of bands and artists covered is immense, though they're almost all on the pop/rock/folk spectrum with dips into jazz and other stuff here and there. He even does trees of genres, such as American Pop 1950-'64. You have to see these things to believe them. All three volumes are still available and are well worth tracking down. MP