I was slightly worried about the skinhead look and some of the lyrics but I hope that this interview shows that the boys have a great set of influences, lyrics that are relevant to what happening to them now, that they love music and lastly, but perhaps most importantly, have a great sense of humour.

The Janitors are Tino/Vocals, Ramona/Guitar, Lolo the Loubard/Bass and Cherry Boy/Drums.

Cherry Boy : Our first gig was in may 2003. The average age is about 24.

Tino: We were (still are!) just a bunch of friends who wanted to play rock & roll together. We all had others bands before, We also started to run a band because of general boredom in our city. I also had a band with Cherry boy before the Janitors. It was more a punk rock stuff, not a very interesting thing as we were beginners. We were more or less 20 when we started the band, I’m now getting close to 25, I’m the “old” chap of the band.

You have a great 1977 style sound that’s very reminiscent of early Skrewdriver. What are your musical influences and who do you rate now? Cherry Boy: Yeah Skrewdriver’s first album we dig a lot but of course what comes after is not for us, not at all, the RAC stuff we never liked. We’re big big fans of late ‘70s Punk Rock, some of us are more Oi! oriented, others would go for more Power Poppish stuff, but the kind of bands that get us together are great outfits such as the Adicts, Blitz, Cocksparrer, Cockney Rejects, the Strike, Menace, Rebels, Ramones, the Kids, PVC, the Boys, Radiators, Undertones, Carpettes, Chelsea, Rowdies, the Dogs, Cigarettes, Killjoys and many many more, also all those great obscure bands from compilation series like Killed By Death, Bloodstains, Back to Front, England Belongs to me or Bored Teenagers. Then we also dig different types of Rock & Roll like ‘60s Garage and Surf Music, Rockabilly, old Psychobilly, then Mod stuff, good ‘60s Ska, Rocksteady and early Reggae… Tino: I’m also into Tamla/Motown sixties’, classic British and American rock bands such as the Stones, early Kinks, the Who, Stooges, Velvet Underground, Small Faces, the Count Bishops. I take everything from Chiswick. Older stuffs as well like Rhythm’n’Blues and Rock’n’Roll, with classics like Johnny Rivers, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, Bo Diddley,Chuck Berry the greatest and so many more…We’re a bit into cold wave or punk wave, we do cover Crisis, the song “PC 1984 “ and Joy Division, Warsaw, the Fall and Gang of Four have always taken a special place.

Brief history of the band so far. Cherry Boy : We’re from La Rochelle, on the Atlantic coast, but some of us actually live in Nantes (2 hours north) or Bordeaux (2 hours south!). We’ve done nearly 50 gigs to this day, with bands like Menace, The Kids, Last Resort, Hard Skin and many others, we have one single, one split single with Lutèce Borgia and an album out, we did 2 tours in the eastern countries with Lutèce Borgia the first time and Les Bombardiers the second, going as far as Leipzig, Praha and Budapest each time, we’ve already had a lot of fun thanks to this band and largely drunk enough beer for our whole life already but it’s not gonna stop now so, my dear liver, you’ll have to hang on a bit longer! What scares me the most you know is getting a beer belly…That’s not what you’d call “sexy”!!

Can you tell us a little about the Skinhead/punk scene there and what it means to you to be a skinhead?

Tino: Actually there are very good bands nowadays: you got Périphérique Est” a killer French 77 style band, “the Anteenagers” great weird punk band with members of “Operation S” and “Steve and the Jerks”, “Frustration” from Paris which got a very efficient Joy Division/Warsaw style. “Old Cunts”, oi! band from Paris with “ex-Teckels and Toltshock” members, two of the best French late 90’s oi! Bands. Our blood brothers “Les Bombardiers” from Bordeaux. “Clean Cuts” from “Saint-Etienne” and “Trendy SS” from Bordeaux. There are also younger bands like “the Daltons”, “Gonna get Yours”, “Russian Roulette”, “the Rudes” that are worth it for streetpunk.

Cherry Boy : I’ll skip that one ‘cause I got hair mate! Anyway, when it comes to the French Oi! scene particularly, there weren’t many bands that we really liked when we started, but there are many new bands that go for that good old late ‘70s sound we like so much and that’s better! But France’s got lots of Punk Rock and Garage bands that are really worth it.

Tino: Concerning the French skinhead scene, it’s very divided because of politics. It seems that it has always been this way and it’s not going to stop. I think it’s boring, we don’t want to play this endless silly game or pay attention on it even though our lyrics are quite political and social, we don’t belong to nobody except our mothers and birds haha. There are loads of whiners and bloody hypocrites, just like in real life and it’s getting bigger with Internet since any bugger can spread lies and cheap reputation hidden behind their computers. We never see them when we play. “Go on the streets and get yerself a life!” There are also some fights at gigs, just like in every country I suppose. Otherwise you can see skinheads, punks, psychobillies or hardcore kids at gigs, which is a good thing. For me being a skinhead is something personal. I’ve been a skinhead since I’m 14, not for the trend or to copy people. It was first for music, smart style, lousy juvenile aggro, being independent, refusing dogmas whatever it’s political, religious or philosophical. Of course we must talk all the time about the “cult” and the pride of belonging to the working class haha. We got to admit we’re godamn British wannabes…but we’re still pretentious arrogant froggies!

How do your gigs go down?

Cherry Boy : We tend to get more and more girls in our audience which is good.

Tino: We had some problems of violence at our gigs in the beginning, exclusively in France because of nationalist or nazi skins and dogmatic reds. The best scene nowadays is in Germany I think. We’ve always had great moments down here, the people is very friendly, passionate and very receptive to our music. Otherwise we don’t take it very serious, a gig should not be a political meeting, we’re not bloody preachers and we have to deal with a drunkard audience each time, we’re here to enjoy ourselves and please the mates.

It’s a common misconception that skinheads are racist and violent. Songs like Hippie-ka-yeah and here to Stay are incredibly violent. Is this part of the skinhead culture or did you have a bad experience with ravers/disco freaks? Cherry Boy : We’re not racist, that is for sure. And, well, I wouldn’t really say the Janitors are a skinhead band, 2 of us actually got hair! I think we’re a basic Rock & Roll band but we can’t really play so you could call it “Punk” Rock! Tino: Well, I’m half gook so I’m the band’s guarantee. Hippie-ka-Yeah is a song about a very serious fight that happened at the end of a Laurel Aitken gig in France, 4 years ago with the local skins and punks (about twenty of us). Junkies and damned “techno punks” started to call us nazi and threw stones and bottles into us without any willing to understand what we really were; we fought back and some of these cunts sued us after that fight. It’s true that violence has always been assimilated to the skinheads but there is an obvious difference between unjustified violence and fighting back. Not behaving like a victim is not exclusive to skinheads…Anyway peace sucks and love is for sobs haha.

Can you tell us a little bit behind the songs like Berlin 61 and Worker’s Rights

Cherry Boy : I can tell about “Berlin 61”, I wrote this song after a trip to Berlin, you know that “wall city” thing is really weird it disturbed me… When people and even families hate each other so much for reasons they don’t even understand that they have to build a big wall to separate them…

Tino: Workers’ rights is about the workers’ condition which is continuously called into question by the leading class and policies in France. The workers down here are becoming more and more individualists as their rights are reduced each day. That is such a pity because workers should be interdependent rather than being in competition. The menace of unemployment is very strong as well, it’s very hard to find a proper and stable work nowadays, especially for the youth with no qualifications. I know what I’m talking about as I work as a building sites worker and had four different boring, tiring jobs this year. This song is a simple proclamation for the working-class.

I have to say that I absolutely love your album and think its primal fucking punk rock’n’roll. The other thing I like is the sense of humour in the sleeve. There’s no pictures of the band or band names except your boots and the front cover with the mops and bog brushes is great. Why did you choose to do this? Cherry Boy : Yeah, well, I would have a liked a picture!! I’m the new Billy Idol you know? Tino: He’s the new Billy Idol for the slutty behaviour, but he looks like a fat child. We decided to put our shoe sizes instead of our male model faces so then the world can see how big our feet are (apart for two of us, we won’t name them). We all know what a huge shoe size means and 46 in Europe means 11 for a Brit shoe size to give you an idea haha! For the cover we decided to put some brushes and mops and to use such colors to take the piss out of the Soviet propaganda’s imagery ‘coz “Our downfall is their scheme” ha ha. Cherry Boy and I also worked as sweepers, janitors of course and some other crummy jobs. In fact the picture sleeve is dedicated to us and no one else.

Why do you sing in English? When you play in France do you sing in French?

Cherry Boy : We had a few songs in French but we don’t play them anymore. I did write a few songs for the band, and it’s much easier for me to write in English. This is Rock & Roll, meant to be sung in English… You wouldn’t sing Flamenco in German!

How has response been to the album?

Cherry Boy : So far so good!

Tino: We sell more abroad than in France that’s obvious!

What next for the Janitors?

Cherry Boy : We’ll be in Sevilla south of Spain pretty soon, I can’t wait! And we’ll play on that festival with the Cockney Rejects, Argy Bargy and Evil Conduct in Bretagne (Britanny), should be great! Thanks mate, bop till you drop!

Tino: You’ll have to organize us a show in UK, we need to come over there! There’s also another European tour to be confirmed. A huge festival in Leipzig, Germany, called “Oi! The Meeting” in September with bands such as “the Templars”, “Superyob” and many other bands. We’ll be back in studios for a 7inch in summer. Thanks for the interview, sorry for my poor English, keep the good work with yer site, it has become quite a bible for us! Cheers!