No rock band in the late ’60s was more radical than The Velvet Underground. Beginning with its 1967 debut, The Velvet Underground & Nico, the group founded in New York City by guitarist Lou Reed and experimental violist John Cale democratized the avant-garde while simultaneously elevating rock music to art status. Peak moments like “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” “Heroin,” and the searing “Sister Ray” folded minimalist drones into Bo Diddley-style chugging to forge a startlingly new musical language. Reed’s lyrics exposed the rock world to underground art and queer culture. Yet he also penned prosaic love songs (“Pale Blue Eyes”) and primal proto-punk (“What Goes On”) with equal brilliance. Punk soaked up VU’s street-bred attitude (“I’m Waiting for the Man”), indie rock absorbed its feedback hypnotics (“White Light/White Heat”), and goth borrowed wholesale from …Nico’s intensely forlorn ballads (“Femme Fatale”). Ultimately, though, The Velvet Underground’s biggest gift was to give future generations of arty weirdos and outsiders the permission to create music that proudly defies mainstream conformity.