Five Hungry Joes – A pictorial archive of the Trashcan Sinatras. Legendary Scottish Band

…and maybe the band will reply.

In the days before the internet, band forums and the like, the only means of communication for a band and its followers would have been perhaps, a letter. Therefore early releases like ‘Obscurity Knocks’ invited you, me and the world to write to them through their ‘I Hate Music’ address in Kilmarnock.

Now I never wrote to the band myself. Why? I’m not really sure, but anyhow, I’m sure lots of you did and you may have been lucky enough to receive a reply on their rather nice Shabby Road headed paper – as long as you sent an SAE that is – but even that wouldn’t guarantee a response.

These letters would let us all know what the band were up to and if you get yourself a copy of Finn Hartley’s book ‘Who’s He?’, you’ll see that Mr Douglas was up to more than just making music.

The ‘I Hate Music’ address line was replaced around the time of ‘A Happy Pocket’ with ‘The Receivers’ – not that that made much of a difference in response time.

So here’s one of those letters, and a big thank you to John Hartley for sending me a copy.

Circa 1994/5