In this guest post, documentary maker and writer, Ken Sweeney, explains the background to his recent Radio Nova documentary about The Trashcan Sinatras, which is nominated in the IMRO Radio Awards 2024.
This piece is accompanied by a companion piece by Colm. The pieces were written together, from two perspectives, about the same subjects.
THE Trashcan Sinatras are not a well-known band.
Even in Scotland where they’re from.
So, it’s marvellous that a radio documentary I made about them has been shortlisted for the IMRO Radio Awards 2024.
Soon a judging panel will be listening to Trashcan tunes ‘Orange Fell’, ‘Thrupenny Tears’ and Obscurity Knocks and hearing stories about Go Discs Records.
The Scottish Government in Ireland tweeted they’ll be rooting for The Trashcans on award night.
Over in Edinburgh, the Consulate General of Ireland, has also been in touch after The Herald newspaper in Scotland delivered a rave review by Teddy Jamieson in his radio column.
A few years ago, when I started making radio docs, I decided I’d avoid the well-chronicled big Irish acts.
Instead, I’d just make my docs about the bands I love: In Search of The Blue Nile, REM: Out of Athens, The Go-Betweens and The Irish Writers, and now The Trashcan Sinatras.
Everything I do has to be personal and the connection I have with The Trashcan Sinatras goes way back to when I was living in London in the early nineties, making music under the band name Brian with my pal Niall Austin.
Brian’s music – jangly, sad, melodic pop – isn’t a million miles away from the music The Trashcans make.
Brian did a few singles, Niall returned to Ireland, and I hooked up with Setanta Records, a label for Irish bands in London. https://theblackpoolsentinel.com/2019/06/20/squat-if-brian-and-setanta-records/
At the time it was like signing for Manchester United.
One of the big Setanta bands, The Frank and Walters – kind, warm, sincere men, attracted the interest of Andy McDonald, the boss of another record label, Go Discs.
I remember a rendezvous with Keith Cullen, the guy who ran Setanta, in a pub around the corner from Go Discs.
Keith was sitting in the middle of these guys who he introduced as The Trashcan Sinatras. I was bowled over because I loved The Trashcan Sinatras. I’d been to see them at an early show in The Borderline.
Back then in the pub, I think I told them they reminded me of The Jam, which is probably the best thing you can say if you ever meet The Trashcan Sinatras.
The Trashcans disappeared for a while after their first album but I’d often meet Andy McDonald at Frank and Walters’ gigs and I’d ask him what the band were up to? When the next record was out? He’d signed them, believed in them. They were in good hands.
Back then I used to navigate central London by records shops. There was Cheapo Records in Soho, and in a lane off Leicester Square another record shop which sold a lot of promo stuff. The Trashcans music would be the most precious thing in these shops, their beautiful songs, John’s hand painted cover on ‘I’ve Seen Everything’.
The PR man for Setanta Records, Colm O’Callaghan was another big Trashcans fan. The Trashcans getting shortlisted in the Irish Radio Awards owes as much to Colm, No Disco, Donal Dineen and Rory Cobbe as
it does to Radio Nova and myself.
When Colm returned to work in RTÉ in the mid-nineties he started airing the Trashcan videos on the Network 2 music show No Disco.
There was even a Trashcan Sinatra’s special with host Donal Dineen interviewing the band.
I recall doing a Trashcan special with Tom Dunne on Newstalk as well, with John Creedon and Fiachna Ó Braonáin playing them on RTE Radio.
In 2016, I landed in Glasgow to make a radio documentary on The Blue Nile for RTÉ Radio.
The first person I bumped into in Glasgow was John Douglas from the Trashcans.
I recall he was a tad sceptical about my ‘search for The Blue Nile’ but loved the resulting programme, as did Paul from the band.
The Trashcans also liked the radio docs I made about the early days of REM and The Go-Betweens
So, they were totally on-board when I began work on a Trashcan doc six or seven years ago.
The band were very patient, every time I came back looking to talk again.
But I couldn’t finish the programme for a long time because I sensed something was missing.
It was Scotland.
I realised I needed to go to Shabby Road, to the beach outside Irvine where the band gathered late at night as teenagers to dream their dreams.
We also recorded John playing songs at Billy Farrell’s studio outside Dublin, who did such a fabulous job sound editing the programme.
We recorded new acoustic versions with Trashcans guitarist Paul Livingston, whose life as a young musician reminds me of my own, and who cracked me up so often with his memories.
By the way, it really is a team effort with The Trashcans. Often, I’d ask them to play me a song, sometimes they could and sometimes I was told: ‘You’d need Paul for that’, or ‘You’d need John for that’, or both of them would tell me: “You’d need [singer] Frank to do that”.
The Trashcan Sinatras don’t do nostalgia. But they did let me drag them back.
I was astonished at all the things they’d been through, losing the studio, the bankruptcy.
It’s an incredible story. Then John talking about his health scare and the surgeon, Mr Molloy from Cork, who saved his life. And how it had helped him appreciate life, bursting into a Trashcans’ song, ‘Best Days
On Earth’.
But I wanted the programme to be fun as well!
There’s comedy with John having to go and meet Frank Sinatra’s people. And the part where Paul has to go to court.
The voice of Frank’s people and the Scottish judge were generously provided by a respected Irish stage actor called Morgan C. Jones, who recently won rave reviews for stage play The United States Vs Ulysses,
by Colin Murphy.
I dedicated the doc to a Scottish friend, Stuart Robertson, a colleague I worked with in the BBC Film Archives in London during the nineties.
It was a very interesting place, but a little class orientated, with people sticking to their sections.
Stuart arrived in one day and he spoke to everyone, the van drivers, the guys in the post room, the guys pushing trolleys of film cans. His attitude was: ‘I’m Scottish and I talk to everyone’. The Trashcan Sinatras were and are Stuart’s favourite band.
I’m not into big rambling podcasts where musicians shoot the breeze about their records.
I ruthlessly edit. It can’t lag or bore people.
The Jam album ‘All Mod Cons’ has 12 songs on it.
It doesn’t ramble. That’s why you love it.
You can make the stories even more enjoyable and real.
When The Trashcans told me about the bloke who fell through the ceiling of their studio trying to rob a bottle of whiskey, I could hear the sound of him screaming as he fell and the smash of glass.
When John Douglas recounted going to meet Frank Sinatra’s people in New York, I could hear Frank’s guy talking.
Incidentally I learned how to make radio docs on a weekend course run by RTE Radio’s Doc on One team, who commissioned my first doc Michael Jackson’s Irish Driver which won a Gold PPI Award.
Growing up there was an awful snobbery about bands like Big Star.
Before the internet, how could you find out about these groups?
So, I always aim my docs at new listeners who have never heard of The Go-Betweens or The Blue Nile. The Trashcan Sinatras are great story tellers but the reaction I get most from people who have heard our
programme is: This band have so many amazing songs. How do I not know about The Trashcan Sinatras?
As Trashcans guitarist Paul reflects at the end of our programme: The only thing left to show for all your years of effort is not the stories of silliness, it’s the actual music’.
I’m thrilled that more people know about The Trashcan Sinatras from listening to this programme.
And that it’s being used to promote John Douglas’s solo dates in North America during October
https://trashcansinatras.com/blogs/news/john-douglas-north-american-tour
Having gotten so much pleasure from Trashcan Sinatras records through the years, it’s lovely to give something back.
The Trashcan Sinatras still call me ‘Brian’ not Ken but I’m fine with that.
The Blackpool Sentinel 
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