While it might be a little dreary to think of a cross-country road trip, a fun guide to rock-and-roll landmarks across North America has me itching to load up, head out, and touch the sacred grounds of infamous debauchery, birthplace homes, and final resting places of rock's greatest legends. Published by the Santa Monica Press, Led Zeppelin Crashed Here is peppered with modern-day photographs and a detective's keen eye for tracking down rock history in its original scandalous settings, and the pages turn like attacking a bag of chips. Travel writer Chris Epting collects more than 300 pages of these famous (and hidden) sites, sure to put a smile on the face of any music nut who finds his new book in a stocking. From directions to the concrete Woodstock marker in the earth outside Bethel, New York, to a deeper understanding of what Joni Mitchell was singing about in "they paved paradise and put up a parking lot," Epting's research makes me want to visit the location of famous album-cover sites for a personal snapshot, like in front of Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti brownstone or shaking hands at the Warner Bros. studio lot where Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here cover was created.

Next week the Yep Roc Records imprint releases the five-disc I Wanna Go Backwards box from Robyn Hitchcock, the first of twin sets that pluck three choice albums from his catalog, slather each with associated outtakes and demos, and ice the layer cake with two CDs of B sides. Selecting three fan-favorite albums of solo work, the offering includes Black Snake Diamond Role from 1981, the pensive I Often Dream of Trains from 1984, and the haunting Eye from 1990. Hitchcock's wit and image associations are socially progressive, brutally honest, and seductively mad. Too timid to slide into the full box set or the eight-LP vinyl version? All three expanded albums are being reissued individually.

Two corporate brands are looking to snuggle up with taste-making young consumers with new CDs. Toyota's Scion line has always been serious about its factory-installed sound systems, and now its audio/visual department has teamed with five hip record labels - Ninja Tune, Vice, Light in the Attic, Greensleeves, and Strictly Rhythm Records - for a series of pumping remix discs. Letting each label's stable of artists cut loose on a label-mate's work, highlights include knob-twisting from Modeselektor, Max Glazer & Federation of Sound, and Holy Ghost.

Robert Pollard, the former captain of the starship Guided by Voices, is just as busy as a solo artist with two new albums next week, and hitting the halfway point in his monthly seven-inch-single series. Merge Records is behind all the wax love, as both the "pop" CD, Coast to Coast Carpet of Love, and the "rock" CD, Standard Gargoyle Decisions, will be available in a limited edition of 1,500 180-gram vinyl LPs. Pollard has been showing off a few cards from both decks for the past few months in his Happy Jack Rock Records Singles Series, issuing a 45-RPM single roughly every 30 days, featuring an A side from one of the two albums and a exclusive B-side bonus. This coming Tuesday, look around your local vinyl-proud record shop for this month's single, "Shadow Port," or last month's single, "Pill Gone Girl."