Too little-known in their time to qualify as forgotten, the Misunderstood were, in all but riches and renown, the American Yardbirds: a panzer-garage quintet from Riverside, California, combining electric-blues lust with rave-up dementia and tight, flammable songwriting. After an early-’66 line-up change, the band boasted, in the country-raga invention and greased lightning of steel guitar prodigy Glenn Ross Campbell, its own Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page rolled into one.

The Misunderstood also had heavy patronage: Future BBC DJ John Peel caught the group at a shopping mall gig in San Bernardino, California (where he was a local Top 40 jock), and was instrumental in the group’s June ’66 move to London, where the Misunderstood made their few official singles and slowly fell apart.

These feral demos show why Peel went wild: singer Rick Brown’s deep, scarred bark, like Howlin’ Wolf swallowed whole by Eric Burdon; the searing psychedelic prophecy of Campbell’s pedal steel in the London audition takes of “My Mind” and “Children of the Sun.”

Two weeks after that September ’66 session, Jimi Hendrix arrived in the UK and became all the rage, the immigrant acid king. But the Misunderstood got there first. Hear the proof.