it's safe to say this is probably not the best gig the trashcan sinatras have ever played. the venue is a freezing, cold, grimy glasgow pub that's seen better days and nights. in one corner, two girls are having a knowck-down, hair pulling fight over a fella; in another, the audience seems more interested in the football on the telly than the carefully drafted melodic pop the band are doggedly performing behind them. they've already had to contend with a drugged-up taxi driver, and there's a rumour that somewhere in the building a ghost is wandering around...
fortunately for the trash cans, they haven't really fallen this far down the dumper. it's all part of a short film - spooktime - being made to promote their new album, a happy pocket. despite fairly approving critical responses, their previous records haven't exactly set the charts on fire, and the band weren't too keen on making videos anyway. their record company, go!discs, had already had a big success with portishead's film to kill a dead man, and so, after a few drunken conversations, the idea for spooktime was born.
as the band are hasty to explain, though, this doesn't mean they're going to become serious luvvie-darlings. aside from some beatles-style antics on the way to the gug, their part in this is to provide the soundtrack to a rather disjointed series of stories all based around characters from their songs. the script was written by tony crean from go!discs, director john mcfarlane and rock writer paolo hewitt - with a few ideas thrown in by man-of-thr-moment irvine welsh - and crams so many stories into its fifteen minutes that casual viewers could be forgiven for losing the plot.
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the trash cans themselves, however, seem more ambivalent about the project. 'i am scared about it,' sighs frank reader, singer and, according to a rather short-sighted and excitable extra, jarvis lookalike, 'but we've got to find a way to get people to hear our music. we don't sell enough records to justify our record deal from an accountant's point of view. for us it's frustrating, but it's the way of the world these days - you can't just put out music, you've got to get it into the media. but we're damn good at what we do.'
the film is shot inside glasgow's gloriously seedy george hotel, already seen on screen in trainspotting and small faces. the idea is that short videos for the singles from a happy pocket will be cut from it, like trailers for a feature film, and the longer version will be shown in cinemas alongside 12 monkeys.
trash can bassist david hughes is particularly pleased about that: 'what i like best is that if people goto see bruce willis and they're fifteen minutes early, they'll be forced to sit and listen to our music. i like that coercion - i'll use any dirty mean trick in the book because i think we've made a really great album and, if no one buys this one, i'll be really distraught.'
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