"In the 1960s, long before anyone had used the words punk, indie or alternative to describe music, teenagers in virtually every suburb, small town and big city across America spontaneously launched an organic D.I.Y. movement that changed rock 'n' roll—and the country—forever. Under the spell of the exotic new sounds of the Beatles, the Stones and their British Invasion brethren, untold thousands of kids picked up guitars, grew their hair long and took to garages, dens, rec rooms and basements to bang out raw, aggressive, hormone-crazed rock 'n' roll that made up in passion and immediacy whatever it lacked in technical finesse.
With little or no access to the conventional music business and virtually no chance of gaining mainstream success, some of those scrappy young combos achieved local-hero status. Some scraped together sufficient cash to cut a single or two at low-rent local studios. And a handful of those bands managed to score actual hit records, briefly occupying the pop charts and AM airwaves alongside their better-known role models." Continued here.