A great read from Dan Sinker:

You can trace a very clear line from that summer of being scared and sad and loney and watching The Goonies over and over to punk. The underground that I discovered a few years later—probably four or five in actual years but it feels like far more separation than that—was exactly that: a place where you could exist separate from the conformity of the mainstream, where you could chart your own existence, where you could build possibilities that felt impossible and possible simultaneously, and where you could do it alongside others who had found themselves—their true selves—in the liner notes of 7"s and smudgy printing of zines and sticky floors of a Sunday afternoon show in a rock club that smelled of old beer and sweat. Down there, it was our time.

Underground and decentralized, always.