The Trashcan Sinatras ---
History, Background, General Info








The Trashcan Sinatras have been playing together for over 20 years, yet it seems that there isn't a large number of people familiar with them. And that's a colossal shame, both for them and for the public at large. With any luck, that may change, as they continue to write and record fantastic music.

Theirsix studio albums ("Cake", "I've Seen Everything", "A Happy Pocket", "Weightlifting", "In the Music" and "Wild Pendulum") are difficult to find in brick and mortar stores, but can be found rather easily on sites such as eBay, and Amazon.

Find out more about this legendary yet overlooked Scottish band below and at the following websites:

http://www.trashcansinatras.com--The official website.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/trashcan-sinatras/43723108945--Facebook page.
http://www.myspace.com/thetrashcansinatras--MySpace page.
http://twitter.com/TheTrashcans--On Twitter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trash_Can_Sinatras--Wikipedia entry.
http://www.fivehungryjoes.com--Another fan site (very well done)




Could I interest you in a little something special

The Trashcan Sinatras were formed in Irvine, Scotland in 1986, primarily as a cover band. They were signed to the Go!Discs label (no longer with us). Their music is characterized by jangly yet melodic guitars and clever lyrical word play. Their early sound has been compared to other Scottish bands of that era such as Aztec Camera, with a witty lyric style similar to that of the Smiths. While their early sound was pre-grunge alternative ("modern") rock, their more recent sound has been more in the vein of adult album alternative.

Their first album Cake in 1990 featured their debut single and ultimately their biggest worldwide hit single, "Obscurity Knocks". Other songs on the album that received air-play mainly on college and alternative stations were "Only Tongue Can Tell" and "Circling the Circumference". Their second album I've Seen Everything, released in 1993, contained the singles "Hayfever" and the title track.


The hairy years (or: Your time is up, so shut-up)

Things started turning sour for the band in 1996 with the release of their third disc "A Happy Pocket". The band's American distributor declined to release the album in the U.S, resulting in the band not touring North America in support of the album. The record was only released in the U.K. and Japan. Four singles ("The Main Attraction", "Twisted and Bent", "How Can I Apply...?" and "To Sir, With Love") were released with little to no fanfare. To add insult to injury, Universal acquired Go!Discs in 1996 and promptly dropped the band. Much of the music of that era was more of the grunge/alternative style and less the melodic and harmonious Brit-pop of the Trashcans.

TCS were forced to declare bankruptcy and thus maintained a low profile for a few years. No concerts were performed until 1999 (Japan and Ireland). At around the same time, they recorded the single Snow, which was a cover of a Randy Newman song, but this was only released in Japan.


Welcome back

The Trashcans spent the better part of the next 4 years writing songs , recording demos, and finally laying down the tracks for their fourth album Weightlifting. Released as a single was the track "All the Dark Horses".  In preparation for the release in August 2004, the band spent the first part of that year performing at more live venues after having spent the previous few year doing few live appearances. They continued to tour through 2006 in support of the album.

Their fifth album, In the Music, was released in the US at the end of April 2010. TCS had toured North America extensively throughout 2010 and 2011 in support of the album.

Through the website Pledge Music, the Trashcan Sinatras in 2015 sought to raise enough funds to record their sixth album.  With this fundraising a rousing success (155% of its goal), the sixth album, entitled Wild Pendulum, was released in May of 2016 with accompanied tours in the US and UK and an appearance at the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan. 

Other tours were scheduled through 2017, including one entitled All Night With the Trashcan Sinatras, during which they vowed to play all 100+ songs from their 30 year career.





My interest in the Trashcan Sinatras goes back sometime to late 1990.  in the San Francisco Bay Area, we had a radio station KITS 105.3 FM (known affectionately--if not originally--as "Live 105") which played 1980's style "modern" rock.  Think Depeche Mode, The Smiths, XTC, you get the idea.  One day, a song by the Scottish band with the intriguing name of The Trash Can Sinatras (then three distinct words) came on the air.  The song was titled "Only Tongue Can Tell"--equally intriguing.  I immediately loved the band's full sound, rich instrumentation and pop hooks you could hang a heavy trench coat on. 

I found out that the band had recently released their debut album Cake, so I naturally decided to take a chance and buy the record.  I was not disappointed--pretty much every song was a winner.  I loved how the album started out with the heavy acoustic guitar strumming of "Obscurity Knocks".  Not long after this, I was listening to Live 105, and what song should happen to come on the air but--you guessed--it "Obscurity Knocks".  I then found out that this was actually their first single.  Soon, a third single, "Circling the Circumference", got significant airplay.

At the time, I was going through a rough patch, having had my heart broken by a certain lady friend.  Through my despondency, I found some solace through the Cake album, as it found its way into my CD player time and time again.  This wouldn't be the last time that the music of the Trashcan Sinatras helped me cope with difficult times in my life, as I will mention again below.

Also, during this period, I was working at a research hospital in San Francisco, and one of the doctors who worked in the lab with me also became fans of TCS.  When the band was visiting San Francisco on their first American tour in February 1991, we both decided to go--the venue was a South of Market club called the Paradise Lounge.  Much to our distress, we arrived about midway through their set.  Seems we got the times mixed-up, and the fact that the Trashcans were the opening act (for Dave Alvin, late of the Blasters) instead of the headliner.  We caught the last half of the show, and I remember hearing a song that wasn't on the Cake album, wondering what it was.  Later, I found out it was "Orange Fell", which was going to be on their upcoming second album I've Seen Everything.  On a side note, years later I heard that actual cake was served at the venue as part of a promotion of the Cake album, but it must have been long gone by the time we got in.  The next day I remember telling one of our other co-workers about the gig, and after mentioning the name of the band, she seemed intrigued by the name alone.  She was a frequent participant in the oh-so-cool San Francisco club scene, and band names like "Trashcan Sinatras" are a dime a dozen (I'm not sure if she would have liked TCS music, however, considering that it is nothing like that of the typical SF club band).

A couple of year later, I heard a new Trashcan Sinatras song, "Hayfever".  It was then that I realized that a second album, hinted at by the playing of "Orange Fell" at the Paradise Lounge gig in early 1991, was now a reality.  I immediately rushed out and bought I've Seen Everything, and while this second album had a more serious and darker feel, I actually liked it better than Cake.  These two albums were played consistently in home and car for years to come.

Between getting married in 1996 and no longer having a local radio station that would play the type of music exemplified by the Trash Can Sinatras, I never got the news that a third album A Happy Pocket got released.  Part of my ignorance of this occurrence was the fact that the album was not released in the US, so it was not readily available, either to the public or to the media / radio stations.  Lack of availability led to lack of sales, and with popular music tastes trending away from intelligent melodic pop and toward a more heavy grunge sound, the Trash Can Sinatras fortunes were on a downward spiral.  The band was released from Universal after the latter had purchased Go! Discs (the label that originally signed them), and soon the Trashcans had to declare bankruptcy.  To me, it appeared that the Trash Can Sinatras would be no more, and I would have to be satisfied with the first two albums that I owned.  With the internet beginning to blossom, I noticed two things--the Trash Can Sinatras had a definite web presence, with fan sites, a newsgroup, etc., and I also noticed that the elusive third album A Happy Pocket could be had on eBay for a rather hefty price.  I occasionally did searches for TCS on the internet, but the news was almost uniformly gloomy without any real hope in sight, so my optimism for any resurgence of the band gradually waned.  As for A Happy Pocket, I don't remember exactly why I didn't get it at that time--probably a combination of the high price and the hope that it would someday get distributed to the US market.

While the news for the Trashcan Sinatras was depressing, it didn't compare to that what was going on in my personal life.  My wife who had been diagnosed and treated for cancer in late 1998 had a re-occurrence of the cancer in early 2005 and past away in May of that year.  I was suddenly left with the task of raising my 3-year-old son and my 15-month-old boy / girl twins by myself.  With all of the trauma and emotional upheaval going on in my life, I never thought that much about the Trashcan Sinatras anymore.  However, I was listening to Jeanine Garofalo's show on Air America in the car one evening on the way home from work, and she was (of all things) talking about the Trashcan Sinatras, and the fact that they had just released a new album.  I was thunderstruck--I figured the Trashcan Sinatras had long since disbanded with their members moving on to other things.  I immediately bought the new album--Weightlifting, their fourth--and was stunned at how there had been no slippage in music quality over the intervening years.  Having this new album available to me lifted me up at a time in my life when something uplifting was absolutely needed.

It was around this same time that I finally realized that in order to get the third album A Happy Pocket, I couldn't rely on a re-release through a US distributor and that I would have to shell out a few extra bucks on an auction site such as eBay.  I decided to bid on a copy, and was able to obtain a CD for around $26.  Now all of a sudden, instead of two albums, I had all four studio albums--effectively doubling my Trashcan Sinatras listening pleasure.  Again, this was all at I time when I was recovering from my wife's passing, and I found that listening to these new-found treasures helped me persevere.

Not long after this, what with my new found appreciation of TCS, I connected with other fans on the Trashcan Sinatras' website forum. It was great to share an interest like this with others.  Through the website forum, it was learned that the Trashcan Sinatras were working on a fifth album, In the Music which was released in 2008.  As part of the release of this album, the band went on tour where one of the stops was San Francisco, 40 miles north of where I live and over 17 years after the last (and only) time I saw the band.  My girlfriend Sherry and I went to the show and thoroughly enjoyed it.  The next day, the Trashcan Sinatras were scheduled to drive up to Portland, Oregon, stopping in Sacramento for a live in-store acoustic performance at R5 Records.  My girlfriend (now wife), the wonderful woman that she is, agreed to watch my three kids while I made the 2 hour drive up to Sacramento to watch the in-store show.  I figured that this would be a great opportunity to talk with some of the band members and maybe video-record part of the performance, if it was alright with the TCS band members.  I talked with all four of the acoustic-set members (Frank Reader, Paul Livingston, John Douglas and Stephen Douglas), and they all were fine with me taking the videos.  I was taken aback by how nice and humble they all appeared--just like regular people (these guys have a lot to learn about acting like rock stars!).

A year later, while touring again to support In the Music, Portland Oregon TCS fan Mike Chandler discovered that the band was not going to make a tour stop in Portland.  Disappointed, he and his friend Keith Monaghan came up with an ingenious idea--ask the Trashcan Sinatras to perform in Mike's living room for a group of fans, each of which who would pony up enough money to make it worthwhile to the band.  The Trashcans were cautious, but still enamored with the idea and eventually agreed.  The result was that on May 30, 2010, 50 fans (first come / first serve, mostly through social media and the TCS web forum), paid $100 each to attend a truly memorable one-of-a-kind event of a first-class music group playing a gig in a suburban living room.  I am pleased to say that I was among the lucky few who managed to obtain one of these highly-sought-after tickets, and it is not an exaggeration to say that that night was one of the highlights of my life.  I was even able to snag guitarist Paul Livingston's set-list as a souvenir (seen here). Reports of the unique performance made its way into USA Today (both print and online), a Portland TV news show, and the Oregonian newspaper.  Major hugs and kisses once again to my girlfriend for offering to stay with my kids for the day-and-a-half that I was gone.

Two days later, the band played at Slim's in San Francisco, so I was lucky enough to see the Trashcan Sinatras two nights out of three, and in two complete different settings.  My girlfriend Sherry and I stood right against the stage on the left side, right in front of guitarist Paul Livingston.  It was cool to have both Paul and Frank at different points during the show recognize me.  In fact, Paul gave me his set-list at the end of the show, which can be seen in the Miscellaneous section.  Before the start of the show, Sherry went to the ladies' room, and when she came out, she mischievously pulled out a large rolled up piece of paper from under the coat that she was carrying.  It turns out there was a poster advertising the gig hanging inside the restroom, so she snuck it out, figuring it was going to come down that night anyway (naughy girl!).  You can see it in the Posters / Photos section.

The Trashcan Sinatras finished that tour, and were planning to do another North American tour, this one doing acoustic shows.  The success of the Portland house party inspired other ones just like it, and in fact when the band came back to the West Coast for this second tour (in October 2010), they were the one to ask Mike Chandler if they could come back to do another show at his house!  Thus was the beginning of what would affectionately be referred to as "PDX II".  Once again, Mike secured me a ticket for $100 as with the first Portland house party, only this time he told me to come directly over to the house as soon as I flew in rather than waiting until show time as with the first house party.  So I was able to come over around 2:00 in the afternoon, several hours before the show, and got to watch the band set up their equipment and go through warm-up rehearsals.  This show was every bit as fantastic as the first one, only this time it felt more loose and comfortable since we had all done this just a few months prior.  And yet again, I was able to get a set-list, along with a broken string from Frank Reader's guitar.  Sherry stayed home with the kids again--although she's been able to accompany me to the shows closer to home.

In May of 2016, I flew up to Eugene Oregon to attend my third house party, followed a few days later back in the Bay Area with a show at Slim's in San Francisco.  This show was part of the North American tour to support the release of their sixth album Wild Pendulum.  I had the pleasure of bringing my daughter to her first TCS show, and we had VIP tickets which allowed us early entry to a "meet and greet" with the band along with about 30 other guests.  A few months later, on October 23 to be exact, my wife and I attended the San Francisco show for the All Night With the Trashcan Sinatras acoustic tour.  Again we enjoyed mingling with the band during the pre-show VIP gathering.

(to be continued)