These 60+ profiles and interviews trace the creative upsurge of alternative rock in the late 1980s and through the following decade. Drawn from the pages of influential indie music magazine Puncture, and illustrated with many rare photographs, Now Is the Time to Invent offers a scintillating account of a vibrant and hugely significant period in music. It’s hard to define a single starting point for indie rock — here it’s found in the brilliant psychodramas Kristin Hersch conjured up for Throwing Muses and the deadpan, genre-busting, proto-slacker anthems of Camper Van Beethoven. Then it’s followed through to the critical triumphs of Sleater-Kinney and Neutral Milk Hotel more than a decade later. There’s plenty more along the way: Sonic Youth, the Pixies, Meat Puppets, Hole, My Bloody Valentine, Nick Cave, Sebadoh, the Breeders, Jeff Buckley, Fugazi, P. J. Harvey, Guided by Voices, Beck, Cat Power, Pavement, Belle and Sebastian, Will Oldham, Royal Trux, Rufus Wainwright, Flaming Lips, the Magnetic Fields, and much more.