The Underground of Happiness

The next night John Douglas was in Cork. Coughlans . The man with a string of classics behind him with the Trashcan Sinatras . The sleeping policeman. Weightlifting. The neighbour’s place. So many. These he played. I felt like I could die happy after hearing Weightlifting again. In that room. The weight of the melody. Started the gig with Walk on by in tribute to Burt Bacharach. Classy touch. He also found space for a Prefab Sprout number. We let the stars go. Impeccable taste. I spoke to him after and mentioned Victoria Station 1999. The I HATE MUSIC t-shirt. He had a chuckle. What his songs mean to me. His band. There was a gravity about him. But holy fuck the songs. Weightlifting by Trashcan Sinatras

At the end of my twenties I was standing in Waterloo Station in London. I was over for a long weekend with Songs to Learn and Sing . As he queued for food someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, “do you like the Trashcan Sinatras?” I was wearing my I Hate Music t-shirt, bright yellow text on blue, the one I bought at their gig in Nancy Spain’s in Cork a few years earlier, which had a series of anagrams of the band’s name on the back – Anarchist Has Ten and the like. I used to wear this t-shirt around town. It had an uncanny ability to draw comments from people as if it was the controversial opening salvo in an argument, a blatant provocation, a long straight middle finger – “Well I love it”, “You don’t mean that do you?”, and other things. People would approach me distraught, vexed, furious. This particular guy in Waterloo was none of those things. He was politely curious. I told him I did like them and he said, “would you like to meet them?”. Still in the dark, I told him I...