Another of the early single releases on Stiff Records came with this “double B-side” from pub rock veteran Sean Tyler and The Tyla Gang.

I’ve got to admit I always thought Sean Tyler of The Tyla Gang was American, probably because his voice is a ringer for Captain Beefheart.

So too is the primitive blues-based rock’n’roll he played. It was only after he died in 2020 I read in obits that he came from Yorkshire.

And it’s only now that Wiki tells me he was allegedly known as the “Godfather of Boogie” (though I’m pretty certain boogie began around the time he was born in 1946).

Tyler started out with Geno Washington & The Ram Jam Band before becoming a roadie for a group called Help Yourself.

He wrote a fantasy tale that inspired a psychedelic instrumental in their repertoire (The All Electric Fur Trapper) and eventually joined the band.

He then formed Ducks Deluxe with guitarist Martin Belmont and Man bassist Ken Whaley, and when they split up in 1975 he formed his own group, The Tyla Gang.

This typical example of their rough-and-ready no-frills rock’n’roll became the fourth single on Stiff, released as a “double B-side” with an equally pleasingly rough-and-ready no-frills song called Texas Chainsaw Massacre Boogie.

Fitting comfortably into the new punk sound with its noisy minimalism, it was recorded with a line-up of Tyler, guitarist Tweke Lewis (also from Man), bassist Peter O’Sullivan and drummer Phil Nedin.

After that they signed up with the American label Beserkley, which released their debut album, before The Tyla Gang disbanded when the label’s UK operation went bust in 1979.

Unbeknown to me until now, Tyler went on to record with Mike Nesmith and Joan Jett (separately), and later formed a band called The Force with Deke Leonard of Man, but retired from the music business in the mid-1980s after suffering from stage fright in the middle of a gig.

According to his autobiography, Jumpin’ In The Fire, he then became a web designer, car salesman, a pig farmer and a cricket coach, though I do have my doubts about how much of that is true.

At any rate, he came out of retirement in 2007 for a Ducks Deluxe reunion and even reunited The Tyla Gang but packed in for good in 2015, dying five years later.