dublin concert preview

we do it our way

the dublin event guide

by dave roberts
march, 1999

Dave Roberts talks to John Douglas of The Trash Can Sinatras, just returned from Japan and about to sell Shabby Road.

The Trash Can Sinatras are currently a four-member band originally from Irvine, Scotland (which is near Glasgow) currently residing in Kilmarnock, Scotland. They've released three albums: Cake in 1990, I've Seen Everything in 1993 and A Happy Pocket, which was released in various countries in 1996, excluding the US. TCS are known for their melodic, jangling guitars and witty lyrics, often full of word play and double entendre.

It's hard to really compare them to anyone else, but their sound has been compared to fellow Scottish bands Orange Juice and Aztec Camera, with lyrics in the vein of early Smiths or Housemartins. The Trash Cans are not without a sense of humour. They have a (soon to be sold) recording studio called Shabby Road, and if you don't know what it's named after I'm not going to tell you. Recently returned from Japan, John Douglas (rhythm guitar and vocals) explains "it's the third time we've been there, we played five gigs and spent three days in the studio with a Japanese band called Sunny Day Service. All the gigs were six o'clock in the evening apart from one late night one at 7.30 pm. We were partying for a fortnight and took it in shifts of three days each."

So the good news for fans is that work has now started on their fourth album which they hope to have out later in the year. John explains the process begun in Japan. "It was the start of our next album. We're going to try to get to America in April to record more, then maybe somewhere else to finish it off. It'll come out in Japan first on Sony and then we're gonna license it to other countries. It's a nice change as well because it's only a one album deal so there's no pressure." The Mean Fiddler gig serves as a slight distraction to the job at hand but it turns out that they're more than excited about coming here "It's been a bit soul destroying in the UK so we don't bother playing there any more but people in Dublin kept phoning up asking us to play but we wanted to wait until we had a full set of new songs. The last gig at Whelan's was great, really good for morale, something to do with the nice looking girls. Everyone who came to the gigs seemed to know the stuff and seemed to be delighted to be there."

Even though the TCS haven't quite reached the dizzy heights of fame, they quite recently had a brush with that bastion of quality journalism, the Sun. "We were in the process of going bankrupt and Frank (lead singer and guitarist) is kind of newsworthy because of his sister (Eddi Reader). When they phoned up, the phone at Shabby Road had been cut off. Next thing they phoned up Franks Da who told them that he hadn't seen Frank for a couple of days." The article said that Frank was wanted on fraud charges and had "gone missing" and stated that Shabby Road appeared to have been hastily abandoned and was locked up. The article which appeared in January 1998 speculated that after TCS broke up, Frank got himself into serious debt, was wanted on fraud charges and had gone missing, and was in so much trouble that he just disappeared. The mundane truth was that Frank hadn't been out of the country since last fall, and hasn't travelled much further than Irvine, to visit his parents. The band hadn't broken up either, but still owed a few quid from their Go-Disc days. As the reporters couldn't get in touch with him, they simply assumed he'd gone AWOL. Still it was the most (though not the best) press we ever got."

The Trash Can Sinatras play the Mean Fiddler on Friday 5th March. And as a special treat they'll be unveiling their new material in a special session for Donal Dineen on Today FM. Listen out for it.

Originally appeared in the Dublin Event Guide.