Birdman Cult unleash their second single, ‘Janet’ on April 17 via Donut Recordings.
‘Janet’ is the follow up single to the band’s 2019 debut offering, ‘Snakes’. Of the track, frontman Joe explains; “‘Janet is a romantic anthem for the undesirables; it’s an homage to the female lead in my favourite movie ‘The Greasy Strangler’. ‘Janet’ is sort of a Viz-style caricature of the girl I lost my virginity to; the sort of sexually aggressive queen I needed to chuck me about a bit and teach me how to ‘dance’”. The origins of the band’s name are complex and mixed. Part named after ‘The Birdman Cult’ an ancient religious sect who inhabited Easter Island who were suppressed and eventually halted by Christian missionaries in the 1860’.
A second influence is the metaphor of the Tangat Manu or ‘Birdman’, where representatives of native clans would select a prospective champion to retrieve a seasonal egg from a remote island. The winner would retrieve the much coveted prize, grow their hair and nails, be lavished with the season’s harvest and never have to want for anything, until the next Tangat Manu was victorious. ‘Janet’ as with their debut single, release, ‘Snakes’ was produced by Chris Ellul of The Heavy. Singer Joe Eden of Birdman Cult just started his career in broadcasting with ‘Proper Mint Narrowboat Lockdown’ an hour long show devoted to the emerging Bristol post punk scene.
For the human contraceptive Joe Eden, coupling at college was strewn with hits and misses. One such hit however, proved almost too hot to handle for the greasy teen. While the cool kids were rubbing unspeakables to EuroPop at the meat market, Joe had his sights set on a bigger prize. Janet was a fully active, 18-certificate, foul-mouthed, redheaded succubus. Between sucking down cigarettes and knocking back Nukie Brown, she frequented the more skuzzy underground dance halls, where she took a shine to our spindly-limbed hopeless romantic. Known as the ‘Disco Queen of the North’ Janet had a reputation for being ‘the best hotstepper ‘pon the electric dancefloor’.
Well-versed in the sideways tango, she had a habit of dragging young bucks by the horn into fully-fledged manhood. Our young male had to dig deep and do his best Billy Elliot impression to woo the more seasoned female. “Am I doing it right?”, he asked? After a few missteps and light beatings from other would-be suitors, Joe’s mating dance caught Janet’s one good eye and was soon tangled up with his ‘Hootie Tootie Disco Cutie’. “Janet, am I doing it right?”. This conquest was not without its consequences…. Will the Birdman Smile upon the canny two? The course of true love (in this instance) did indeed run smooth; it was dripping in the grease from the hungry lovers’ loins.
