Plain Or Pan

Our first house was a two up, two down, easy to keep semi in a quietish part of Ayrshire. We decorated as we went, wallpapering here, painting there. We did up the kitchen, sorted out the bathroom, replaced the front...

See if you’re going to crawl around on top of a slag heap in yr birthday suit, with only a giant turtle shell on top of your back to protect you from the elements, you don’t really need to signpost your...

The uncracked, ochre-washed spine of a book leapt out at me from the shelf of an Irvine charity shop recently, followed immediately by a shuddering Proustian rush of deja vu. The offending novel, David Coventry’s...

“Bill! BILL!!! Stop! STOP!!! The bassline, man… What you playin’ at? Disco’s been over for six whole months. Get your mind off the 13-year olds in Tramp and focus on the task in hand, man!” “Mick…Mick! It ain’t...

This piece was originally written a month, maybe even six weeks ago, but I was waiting on permission from various sides to post it. In the interim, the Trashcans suddenly, unexpectedly and shockingly lost John Douglas...

I’m a sucker for a well-sung harmony. You know the sort of thing, a radiant Gibb brothers burst of aural sunshine, a California-coated Mamas and Papas heart melter, a slow-ooze of Bellshill Beach Boys...

I’ve been asked a few times the past week where folk can pick up copies of my Trashcan Sinatras books. The Perfect Reminder was initially available through Last Night From Glasgow, but it seems they have no stock...

John Douglas 1963 – 2026 “How’s it gaun? Y’awright?” These were usually John Douglas’s first words, whether one or two songs into a set with the Trashcan Sinatras, or more recently out front on his own, but also...

The boy always had bikes. From the moment he spied his big sister’s, he wanted one of his own. He had a wee yellow Halfords-made thing, a Stinger, all go-faster stripes and cartoon wasps with helmet to match, and...

Odd band, The Strokes. They’ve got – or maybe nowadays since they’ve made some real money – they had something of a classic rock ‘n roll look; battered Levi’s and even more battered...

Jimmy Smith is the bridge between jazz and soul, a colossus of his chosen instrument who had one well-tailored foot firmly planted in the camp marked ‘strictly no sell out’ and the other in the camp marked...

It’s a well-written fact over the years that Tomorrow Never Knows was the first track The Beatles recorded for Revolver. Barely out of short trousers, The Beatles turned to studio-as-instrument and created a...

Brian Epstein, in possibly one of the first genius music marketing moves, had The Beatles record a couple of vocal tracks in German, the idea being that the fans in the country where the group had served their musical...

American groups – like any number of those Nuggets bands you can reel off in your sleep – or The Turtles or The Byrds (‘animal’ name, weird spelling – coincidence?!?) grew their mom’s...

To paraphrase a well-worn old cliché, there are two types of people; those who love the Trashcan Sinatras and those who haven’t yet heard them. The Trashcans are the epitome of the cult band. Look up the meaning...