A few words on John Douglas and The Trashcan Sinatras.

Paul McDermott · From the Archives - John Douglas of The Trashcan Sinatras (2005)

An interview with John Douglas from 2004.

I associate three songs with the summer of 1993: ‘Creep’ by Radiohead; ‘Linger’ by The Cranberries and ‘Hayfever’ by The Trashcan Sinatras.

John Douglas, the guitarist of The Trashcan Sinatras, passed away on 03 August 2026 after a short illness and the sad news reminded me of the scorching summer of 1993 I spent in Boston on a J1.

I’ve written previously about those adventures in the cockroach-infested apartment that six of us shared on Haviland Street and the albums I associate with that summer (“The Go-Betweens, Leonard Cohen, U2 and Boston Celtics’ Reggie Lewis”). The radio station of choice in our apartment was the great alternative Boston broadcaster WFNX.

It seemed that whenever the station was switched on ‘Creep’, ‘Linger’ or ‘Hayfever’ was on the air. Everytime, without fail. One summer, three songs.

I loved ‘Hayfever’, I had bought it on 12” in May 1993 and it came with a gorgeous art print. The print and sleeve of the 12” were paintings by John Douglas. I still love it.

‘Hayfever’ (12”, Go! Discs, 1993). Cover painting by John Douglas. Photograph by Paul McDermott.

Why these three songs? I couldn’t understand it.

‘Creep’ had been released in 1992 and had not been a hit in Ireland or the UK. Now it was getting a serious push in America.

Likewise we were stunned at how big The Cranberries were becoming in the US. I had seen The Cranberries in Cork play to less than 100 people and Delores had spent most of that gig with her back to the audience, now promotional posters for Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? were all over Boston. When The Cranberries did an instore signing at Tower Records during the summer the corner of Newbury Street and Massachusetts Avenue had to be closed down. It was insane.

What the hell was going on?

‘Hayfever’, from I’ve Seen Everything, the Trashcans’ second album, was getting just as much airplay in Boston as Radiohead and The Cranberries. When I returned to Cork in autumn 1993 Radiohead and The Cranberries were huge.

I assumed therefore that The Trashcan Sinatras had also made a crossover into the mainstream while I was in Boston.

They hadn’t.

It was simply that several WFNX DJs had impeccable taste.

I first came across The Trashcan Sinatras when the I saw the video for their debut single ‘Obscurity Knocks’ (with its Rube Goldberg machine) on MTV. I was instantly hooked and bought Cake, their debut album, on cassette from Comet Records. Cake survived my great tape cull of 2004 - somethings just can’t be thrown out.

*Cake* (Go! Discs, 1990). Photograph by Paul McDermott.

John Leckie, who produced The Stone Roses self-titled debut, produced a few tracks on Cake and mixed the album. The UK music press, in thrall to the baggy sounds emanating from Manchester, couldn’t wrap their heads around the Trashcans. “You must be pretty bloody-minded to set up stall in the nation’s rhythm-blasted shopping centre under a huge banner proclaiming ‘Like Funk Never Happened’,” wrote NME.

“Too many maudlin minor chord changes,” wrote Select.

In the US the alternative music press loved the band and Cake quickly sold over 100,000 copies leading London Records - the band’s US label - to take out full-page adverts in the trade papers positioning the Trashcans alongside Ol’ Blue Eyes himself, highlighting chart positions and declaring “The Times, They Are a Changin’”. If ever a moment cursed a band’s career it’s this misjudged advertisement copy.

I can remember reading Select’s line “maudlin minor chord changes” over and over: this is the band for me I reckoned.

Thankfully a few other good friends also fell under the Trashcans’ spell and stayed the course with them. It’s been a joy.

I first saw The Trashcan Sinatras live at Féile 1995 at Páirc Uí Chaoimh in Cork. A lot has been written about Féile 1995. It was a great weekend, the acts at the top of the bill were a who’s who of 90s indie and dance music: Blur, The Stone Roses, Prodigy, Massive Attack, Underworld, The Chemical Brothers, Moby and Paul Weller. Kylie was on the bill and surprised everyone when she introduced Nick Cave out onto the stage to join her in a duet of ‘Where the Wild Roses Grow’. In 2020, on the 25th anniversary of the festival, Des O’Driscoll in the Irish Examiner asked: Féile 95: Did Cork festival have Ireland’s greatest ever line-up?

Féile 1995 Artist Pass. Photo by Iain Wilson.

Predictably reports of the weekend don’t mention the Trashcans, they opened proceedings on the mainstage on the first day of the weekend and only played to the few hundred punters who had trudged down to the Páirc early to see them. I thought they were one of the best acts of the weekend. To my mind their “maudlin minor chord changes” sounded monumental bouncing around a near-empty stadium.

In the mid-90s I was working with Frontline Promotions and when the Trashcans returned to Ireland in November 1995 we happily booked them to play a gig at Nancy Spains. I seem to remember that the band billed it as an “A 2 Z” tour. They send over some posters: A was Aberdeen, B was Belfast, C was Cork, D was Dublin, E was Edinburgh, F was Falkirk and G was Glasgow. I can’t remember where they ended up up after Glasgow. Was it Hamilton? Where the hell were they going to go for “XYZ”?

The idea for the tour probably made sense in a pub one night, but the reality of a criss-cross tour of cities and towns in Ireland and the UK was ridiculous. I have one of these posters somewhere but typically when I went looking for it as I was writing this I couldn’t locate it, I did however find the giant poster advertising the Nancy Spains gig. A proper oldschool block letter poster, one colour on white, printed by Lee Press on South Terrace in Cork. It’s a simple thing of beauty.

Update: Iain Wilson (who toured with the Trashcans as a member of their crew for many years) found the poster. I thankfully hadn’t imagined an “A 2 Z” tour. My memory served me well. I got A, B, C, D, E and G correct. F wasn’t Falkirk but a venue in Dundee called Fat Sam’s and I correctly guessed H was Hamilton.

The Trashcan Sinatras 1995 “A 2 Z” tour of Ireland and UK. Photograph by Iain Wilson.

On Wednesday 01 November 1995 Edwyn Collins played Nancy Spains, two nights before the Trashcans.

I’ve written previously that Edwyn’s gig was originally booked into Connolly Hall but was moved to Barrack Street due to low ticket sales (“Flotsam: Cork’s Old Venues”). ‘A Girl Like You’ with its distinctive string bend guitar riff had hit No. 8 in the Irish Charts earlier that summer but people couldn’t connect the song with the singer. Nancy Spains was better suited for Edwyn and the gig was fantastic. It was by no means sold out but Edwyn was an absolute star and his band, featuring The Sex Pistols’ Paul Cook on drums, was on fire.

We handed everyone who attended Edwyn’s gig a Trashcan’s flyer and hoped that they’d come back up Barrack St. two nights later. If Edwyn represented “the sound of young scotland”, the Trashcans were surely the son and heir, or as Music & Media described them: “Scotland’s most unassuming band, lovingly crafted.”

Two days later the Trashcans arrived for soundcheck. As we loaded in the band’s gear John Douglas spotted a giant Edwyn Collins billboard poster hanging from the top shelf of the bar, it had been there for weeks advertising the gig.

“Edwyn just played here,” John exclaimed turning to me. “How was the gig?”

I told him that it had been brilliant. He asked had it sold out and I told him no.

“We’re fucked then,” said John.

One of the others in the band piped up, “Can I have the poster?” He jumped behind the bar and had it rolled up before I could respond.

I loved that. It told me everything I needed to know about this band.

Trashcans’ setlist from Nancy Spains, Cork (03 November, 1995).

John was right, the Trashcans gig was sparsely attended - but it was so good. I often pore over the setlist I nabbed on the night and can almost relive the gig in my mind. The transitions from electric to acoustic guitar, John taking over from Frank on lead vocals for some of the songs. They were just so good: ‘Hayfever’, ‘I’m Immortal’, ‘I’ve Seen Everything’, ‘Twisted and Bent’, these gorgeous, perfect pop songs played with passion to the faithful few. It was life-affirming stuff.

Go! Discs A&R man Simon Dine had travelled over with the Trashcans. The Frank & Walters, another of his charges, were in attendance and at the lock-in at the end of the night the Trashcans and the Frontline crew sat at one end of Nancys drinking as Dine sat apart with the Franks deep in conversation. I always assumed that Dine was giving the lads a bollocking over the long-awaited second album. Years later Paul and Ashley confirmed to me on To Here Knows When - Great Irish Albums Revisited (EP18: Grand Parade by The Frank & Walters) that my assumption wasn’t far from the truth.

My next interaction with the Trashcans came a few years later when myself and my old friend Conor were at Waterloo Station in London. I write interaction, but I didn’t meet them that day. I was queuing for food. Conor was standing on the concourse waiting for me. He was wearing his Trashcans’ “I Hate Music” t-shirt that he had bought back in 1995 at the Nancy Spains gig.

Some guy walked up to him and asked if he liked The Trashcan Sinatras? This was a first, he was more used to people being completely confused by the sight of someone walking around in public wearing a t-shirt that declared “I Hate Music”. Conor replied in the affirmative and the guy said: “They’re over there.” Conor went over and one of the band admired his t-shirt, they were surrounded by guitar cases and gear and were waiting for a train to Brighton. They spoke for a minute or two and then went off to find their train. I was still queuing for food when Conor returned and calmly said, “You’ll never guess who I just met?”

What the actual fuck!

The next time I saw the band was at an instore gig in Tower Records, Dublin on 02 June, 2004. Weightlifting, their fourth album, had just been released and afterwards I spoke to John for Songs To Learn And Sing, my old Dublin City FM radio show (that interview can be heard at the top of the page). We spoke about the long gap between 1996’s A Happy Pocket and Weightlifting.

“We were way off the radar,” said John.

“We didn’t really do anything for a good five or six years except sit at home and write and get back to a bit of normal life,”

The band had spent the previous ten years on the Go! Discs label touring and recording. In 1996 Polygram acquired a majority stake in the label, and the label was scuttled not too long afterwards.

John explained what the band got up to in the intervening years: “About 1997-1998 when Go! Discs folded we found ourselves with a lot of time on our hands and not a lot of money so we just went back to normal life and struggled to pay the bills, made friends. We started going out into town and being local people rather then these guys who would show up every three months and disappear again. That was the nice aspect of it; we got really grounded in reality again and got back to being normal human beings.”

They returned to Ireland in January 2005 for a couple of dates around the country. I caught them in Whelan’s on 26 January. I hadn’t seen them play live in 10 years. Neither had most of the crowd, the welcome they got that night is one of the louded I’ve ever heard in Whelan’s. It was one of those rare emotional nights that acts as an almost cathartic release for everyone in the room. Magic stuff.

The Trashcan Sinatras - The Workman’s Club, Dublin (12 November, 2016).

I‍ saw them twice more, in The Workman’s Club in November 2016 and at the same venue in July 2018. The 2016 gig was in support of their sixth album, Wild Pendulum. The 2018 gig was the trio of Frank Reader, John Douglas and Paul Livingston playing the band’s first two albums - a dreamlike night.

The Trashcan Sinatras - The Workman’s Club, Dublin (31 July, 2018). Photograph by Paul McDermott.

My last interaction with John Douglas was a few years ago on Twitter. He shared a feature article I’d written for the Irish Examiner about Stump’s A Fierce Pancake writing, “Great article on a great record”.

I thanked him for his kind words and he replied:

“We once had the concept of a response song to Stump’s ‘Charlton Heston (Put his vest on)’. Never made it beyond pub chat but it was called ‘Richard Burton (Put his shirt on)’.”

An idea that never made it beyond the pub, where the idea of the 1995 “A 2 Z tour” should have stayed too I thought.

My old buddy Conor once wrote of the Trashcans: “Buckets of tunes. Buckets of soul. Simply, one of the best ever.”

I can’t top that.

John Douglas was an incredible musician, a gifted guitarist and a gent. RIP.

The Trashcan Sinatras

Carling Rocks Cork: Gig 1

© Paul McDermott 2026