who was the first punk band ?
For me it was the Trashmen.
= new reply since forum marked as read
...came out in December 2013, two months after Lou's death...and while Lou, as an individual artist, certainly was in no need of "vindication" or "validation" at the time of his passing, the box set was seen as the long-overdue acknowledgement and appreciation of that specific album, as well as the Velvets in general.
Rolling Stone's David Fricke did a lengthy essay on the album for Mojo: http://bigread.mojo4music.com/2013/11/velvet-underground/
Lou's famous / infamous quote...found at the link above:
...and that's pretty accurate. In my youth, there was Jefferson Airplane and Cream and the Beatles and the Stones and Creedence all over the place. And in the midst of it arrived "The Velvet Underground & Nico"...the "banana" album...and in the realm of my small town, East coast (Massachusetts) awareness...echoed by my posse at the time...the verdict on first listen was "What IS this shit?" There was no second listening, that became the cleanest album in the collection...played once, put away, forgotten until adulthood.
The Velvets were raw an unapologetic. By the time of "Loaded," Lou had become disenfranchised from the core of Cale, Tucker and Morrison that cranked out "White Light"...and Doug Yule showed a penchant for moving toward pop songs. After "Loaded," Lou went into exile in a day job for his dad's accounting firm. Yule actually had the cojones to release a "Velvet Underground" album WITHOUT LOU...and WITH Deep Purple's drummer Ian Paice in place of Mo Tucker:
People who have heard it (it actually DID come out on CD, believe it or not) classify it as Yule's attempt to re-cast "Loaded" as an even more commercial effort...it's like he followed a song-by-song template.
But "White Light?" Lou may have had the last laugh after all. Two months before he went on to the next world, he named the album for what it was...a game-changer that few people bought upon its initial release.
I was trying to think of them earlier. Thank you! 
...because virtually every performer with a bad attitude and a chip on their shoulder who followed owes them an unpayable debt of gratitude. It really did start here.
