The original garage rock sound first flourished in the mid-1960s when the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, and other British Invasion acts inspired a wide-reaching wave of teenagers and twenty-somethings to scrounge up guitars and gear and emulate their hitmaking heroes — often with far rawer results. From roughly 1964 to 1968, garage bands — named for the perception that many of them were amateurish young outfits that rehearsed in their family’s garages — thrived at youth dances and in small nightclubs around the world. The tough-and-tuneful records left behind by 1960s groups like Paul Revere & the Raiders, the Count Five, the Shadows of Knight, and literally thousands of far more obscure garage bands shaped the sounds of 1970s punk pioneers like the Ramones, the Clash, Television, and the Cramps and more recent bands like the White Stripes, the Black Keys, and the Strokes. The waves of reoccurring garage rock scenes in the U.S., Europe, the U.K., Australia, Asia, and exotic points in between continue to ripple and crash as the music is rediscovered and reinvented by newer generations of angsty kids.

DON’T BLOW YOUR MIND plunges its paws deep into the primordial pit of garage rock’s past while focusing its menacing, sunglasses-after-dark eyes on the vibrant music’s present — and future. Drawing on extensive research that includes dozens of interviews with key members of original 1960s garage bands and their 1970s-2000s descendants and other authorities on the music — label owners, journalists, record collectors, and DJs — to provide a pulsating portrait of this electric D.I.Y. folk music of our time. A highlight of the book is its many profiles of key bands, related topics, and personalities whose stories and contributions are framed within the greater garage rock narrative. Also crucial is a guide to essential albums and an exhaustive list of recommended recordings. Far-out and full-volume, DON’T BLOW YOUR MIND will have you flipping out with your foot on the fuzz pedal from the first flaming page.