Like startled shoals of exotic fish, young women dart hither and yon across a battered dancefloor which has been randomly overlain with stained carpet off-cuts. Some of the young women are stylishly punky, all black leather and kohl'd eyes. Others sport purple lips with matching top-knots sprouting from their shaven heads.
Plainly last used as a venue for public revelry during Harry Lauder's boyhood, the darkened and decrepit dancehall has a small stage at one end where a piano features in bizarre conjunction with a pile of broken armchairs and a shopping trolley. Once-plush seating sags and moulders. Discarded light-fittings slouch in corners. A jarringly-contemporary note is struck, however, by the Folifaxes, silver flight-cases, and mobile phones which litter the hall's rickety tables.
Issuing from unseen quarters, the young women ebb and flow through the dancehall, disappearing through a heavily-curtained doorway. I follow and find myself in a brilliantly lit bar. In addition to lights, there are cameras and action, of a sort. Thick smoke billows. A barman repeats the same snatch of conversation, over and over, with a sozzled patron. Cool youths mime silent conversations and pretend to drink beer ... where the heck are we?
We are in a movie-making wonderland somewhere between the hard-eyed modern Scottish druggie nightmare of "Trainspotting" and the innocent wackiness which characterised "A Hard Day's Night".
Actually, we are within the debased grandeur of Glasgow's George Hotel, a Marie Celeste hewn from smoke-blackened sandstone in Buchanan Street. It is here that Scotland's lairds of melodic quirkiness, the Trashcan Sinatras, are filming "Spooktime", a 15-minute short based on some of the characters who people the songs from the Trashcans' splendid forthcoming album, "A Happy Pocket", due for release in May.
Selections from it will undoubtedly figure on tonight's menu when the band play at Glasgow's Garage, kicking off at 7pm. Additionally, the four-day shoot will yield videos for the band's next two singles, "Twisted and Bent", scheduled for April, and it's follow-up, "To Sir With Love".
Due for cinema release in tandem with Terry Gilliam's newie, "12 Monkeys", "Spooktime" has transformed the George on a Monday lunchtime into a wild Saturday night at the Sleeping Policeman. In this pub, you've got footy on Sky TV, and a band, the Trashcans, on stage ...
You haven't got Irvine Welsh, though, and it's him I'm looking for. I have been lured here by advance PR hoop-la listing "Trainspotting"'s creator as "Spooktime"'s conceptual godfather and executive producer, you see. There is a Welsh listed on "Spooktime"'s call-sheet: a Sgt Welsh of Glasgow's Stewart Street police station. He's down as overseer of "Police contacts/permissions". E-man Welshie a polis? "Shurely shome mishtake ..."
As far as "Spooktime"'s concerned, in fact, it's Irvine no more. Sure, "Trainspotting"'s bingo-hall scene was filmed in the George, which has also provided locations for "The Near Room" and "Bad Boys". And Malcolm Shields, a central character in "Spooktime", was Begbie in "Trainspotting"'s stage incarnation.
It transpires that "Spooktime" was written and conceived by its Scottish director, John McFarlane, plus two bods from the Trashcans' label, Go!Discs: Small Faces' biographer Paolo Hewitt, late of the "New Musical Express", and the label's head of marketing, Tony Crean.
Reveals Crean: "Paolo's a mate of Irvine Welsh, and Paolo wanted him to dot the i's and cross the t's on our script in terms of making it convincingly Scottish ... after all, Paolo's Cockney and I'm Liverpudlian.
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"We didn't want to jump on any Welsh bandwagon, and when we saw the way "Trainspotting" had taken off, we felt it would dominate what is a Trashcan Sinatras' film. We want to show there's more talent in Scotland than Irvine Welsh - Scottish film-makers; film production companies such as Mallinson Television, the one making "Spooktime", as well as bands and writers.
"We want to show that there's a thriving UK creative community, people like John McFarlane, trying to make the leap from pop videos and 10-second TV ads for Irn Bru to proper films. But anyone with any talent gets swallowed up in big money, making films that turn out less sparky."
"Spooktime"'s sparky cast of characters derive from the Trashcans' songs. "One of the main ones is Tommy. He's a trainspotter, but not in the Irvine Welsh sense. He's a sad quiz-machine addict, an obsessive, a big fish in a small pond. He's been hanging around town for too long. All his mates are younger than him because his contemporaries have grown up. He has the potential to turn nasty and become a stalker."
"Spooktime"'s structure and pace are dictated by "The Main Attraction", the Trashcans' current single. "Like the song, the film starts off jaunty and then goes ... well, "bendy". It's a Saturday-night post-football drinking-session that begins quietly and jovially, then gets happier, then goes mad, becoming darker and more serious, before finally ending - like all good Saturday nights-out - in tears."
Tears of joy were shed at Go!Discs following the ultimate success of the label's first filmic venture last year. "To Kill A Dead Man" was a dialogue-free 12-minute "noir" which evolved from Portishead's "Dummy" album. "We hired a London cinema for "Dummy"'s launch, and showed "Dead Man" along with "Get Carter". 'This is either the start of Portishead's career or the finish,' I remember thinking at the time," says Crean.
Portishead went on to sell millions. "To Kill A Dead Man" went on to appear as a support to films including "Pulp Fiction", "Reservoir Dogs", and "In Bed With Madonna".
But never mind "In Bed With Madonna". On screen with the Trashcans is all that matters, and here comes vocalist Frank Read, all aghast. He's just been unmanned by a visit to the extras' rehearsal room.
All the extras - the flock of punky women and cool youths - hail from Glasgow's School of Art. Frank has newly witnessed them rehearsing their reaction to the Trashcans' appearance at the Sleeping Policeman. "I walked in and they were practising worshipping me ... some people will do anything for a Tennets' six-pack."
As I leave the George Hotel, five soberly-suited Trashcans are being led out to be photographed, with a chittering bride, complete with windswept wedding dress, on the steps of Glasgow Royal Concert Hall.
If you seek out the Trashcans' intoxicating new music, you will surely pledge your heart to it, and them, lifelong. There's nothing spooky about Trashcanstime ...
//// The article was accompanied by a picture of the band captioned "Tipped for the top: the Trashcan Sinatras are filming "Spooktime", a short based on characters in the songs from the next album, "A Happy Pocket"." ////
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