...Taylor has impeccable rock credentials. Small, frail, almost consumptive in pallor, the north London son of divorced Jewish parents was something of a guitar and piano prodigy who used the period of convalescence following a serious road accident to hone his skills. He spent his early 20s as a greengrocer before being invited to play guitar in a latterday incarnation of freaky prog-rockers the Edgar Broughton Band.

On the road with such grizzled veterans of the 70s underground circuit, he took every drug under the sun, LSD and heroin included. By 1986, he had hooked up with an eccentric fanzine writer who became his publicist, changed his name to Sheriff Jack, and released two LPs of melodic psychedelia. Comparisons with rock's lunatic fringe abounded.

By the time he was 30 and calling himself Lewis Taylor again, Island Records gave him the green light to make an album. It was a densely packed affair that reflected his intense personality and myriad obsessions. It featured enigmatic one-word titles (Track, Song, How, Right, Damn, Spirit) and lyrics about black moods and shattered dreams.

The songs themselves were so structurally convoluted that it would be minutes before the chorus would break in; crazed synthesiser and guitar passages regularly disturbed the flow. "I'm fascinated with the idea of art born of a disintegrated mind," he said at the time, hailing the visionary dementia of Syd Barrett and Brian Wilson as inspiration.

Exract from "Boiling Bunnies", Guardian Newspaper, August, 2000

People make extravagant comparisons when they first hear Sheriff Jack. They foam at the mouth and invoke the names of Syd Barrett, Richard Thompson, Jimi Hendrix, Prince, Robyn Hitchcock, Wreckless Eric, The Long Ryders and others too batty to mention. One thing they do agree on: this bloke's pretty amazing. Right now you don't know him but you will.....

The prodigy son of an Alabama hobo, the Sheriff is a lot younger than you are and currently resides in the fabulous musical Xanadu of Crouch End, North London, where he constantly plots all manner of aural perversion froms sick and silly little songs to gruesome guitar meltdowns.

A multi-instrumentalist and ex-leader of Iceland's leading protopunk garage loonies the Icebreakerz, the good Sheriff pens all his own dirty ditties and performs them to his multilayered backup of guitar, bass, guitar, drums, guitar, keyboards and guitar.

Currently engaged in teaching his mother to Watusi, Sheriff Jack's premier waxing, the "Let's Not be Nonchalant" EP, is casually unleashed sort of nowish on Midnight Music Records with an album to follow in the Springtime. Selected dates may occur. Or they may not. Let's be nonchalant about it for now.

He's actually quite petite but he's going to be huge. And he's coming over the horizon to turn your brain to cheese. Cop the music of Sheriff Jack. It's (oh, no!) very arresting stuff!

January 1986: 12" EP, "Let's Not be Nonchalant"

Promotional insert included with EP