> Gold star. Velvet Underground is definitely ground zero for Punk to my ears, > but with this recent set of pre-Velvets minimalist releases (eg, Dream > Theater, with LaMount Young, John Cale--who helped start the band I was in, > and others), the stage was somewhat set.
Yeah, yeah, yeah; I loved the Velvets too - but the stuff we Brits called "punk" in 1976 was quite unlike that, except for being a bit raucous. It was more derived from a kind of mutated pub-rock mated with football chants, with undertones of Hawkwind-like bass riffs, played by semi-competent nerds. NY invented punk first. Then London invented something else and stole the name. So sue us.