If bands like Television and Talking Heads were outliers in the punk firmament, then The Dead Boys, led by the scrawny, malnourished Stiv Bators, were perhaps its archetype.

Fired by a passion for the wild antics of The Stooges and MC5, their attitude was encapsulated in the title of their debut album: Young, Loud & Snotty. And its sequel, We Have Come For Your Children.

Neither sold in any numbers but that debut, released in October 1977, produced at least one bona fide punk classic in this song, Sonic Reducer.

It actually dates back to the band’s roots in Cleveland, Ohio, in the early 1970s when it was in the set of legendary proto-punk band Rocket From The Tombs, which contained two of the Dead Boys – guitarist Cheetah Chrome and drummer Johnny Blitz and – for one night only – Stiv Bators.

His behaviour so appalled two of the band – David Thomas (then going by ‘Crocus Behemoth’) and Peter Laughner – that they left to create the more experimental group Pere Ubu, while the remaining trio recruited two more members, Jimmy Zero and Jeff Magnum, and formed a new group called Frankenstein, who soon changed their name to The Dead Boys

Sonic Reducer, written by Chrome and Thomas, remained in the set of both bands and became the first single by The Dead Boys, who I would see at the Roundhouse, with The Damned and The Drones, when they came to the UK in November 1977

To today’s ears they sound a bit rent-a-punk but they earned their place in punk history as one of the very first out of the blocks and were notorious on the New York scene for Bators’ obscenity-strewn stage antics, which included abusing the audience in the style of his idol Iggy Pop, and slashing his own stomach with the microphone stand (ditto).

They broke up in 1979 following a second album (We Have Come For Your Children) and have reformed several times both before and – more surprisingly – after Bators was run over by a taxi in Paris and died of his injuries.