The next day I went to my small, local Astoria CD store, a little hole in the wall place with posters on the wall and a fairly limited selection. I flipped through the used CDs as usual and almost immediately I came across Cake. “Well that’s weird,” I thought. I had never heard of this band until several hours ago, and here they are all the way from Scotland in Astoria, Queens. What are the chances of that? Maybe it’s a sign. Certainly, reason enough to buy it.
I brought it home to the apartment and I popped it in the CD player. I listened to it from beginning to end. When it was finished I played it again. There was the song I had heard on 120 Minutes, but there were nine other songs, too. Songs with strange titles like “Thrupenny Tears,” “Circling The Circumference,” and “Obscurity Knocks.” There was plenty of strumming acoustic guitars, arpeggiated electric guitars augmented with occasional string sections. There was so much to listen to that it didn’t matter that it was almost impossible to decipher the lyrics through singer Frank Reader’s thick Scottish accent. By the end of the second time through I was hooked. This was amazing music!
I spent all of the summer of 1990 listening to this CD. I would play it loud. It would fill the apartment and leak out the windows and doors. It was as if I needed to hear this music every day. It was the only music I would listen to. It was my soundtrack for the summer.
Three years later, the Trash Can Sinatras released their second album, I’ve Seen Everything. Amazingly, it was the equal of Cake. I went to see them at The Limelight in 1993. They did not disappoint. They had become my favorite band.
By 1994, I was actually getting closer to becoming a working actor. Like Rob, much of my work was out of town. In November of that year, I went to Omaha, Nebraska for rehearsals of a touring production of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I was cast as Young Scrooge. I spent most of the rehearsal process working with the actress who was cast opposite me. During a break from rehearsals I found myself sitting in the theatre seats of the Omaha Playhouse several rows behind the young actress who played the oldest Cratchit daughter, Martha, and the child actor who played Peter Cratchit. They were having a casual conversation. I could tell that the actress was trying to get to know the young actor, probably to strengthen the family bond they were portraying on the stage. She asked him what kind of music he liked. I don’t remember his response, but I suppose it was a typical listing of groups a twelve-year-old from 1994 would like.
He then asked her what kind of music she liked. Her reply was, “Oh, you probably wouldn’t know any of the bands that I like.” I figured that like most musical theatre actors her tastes would be based around Sondheim, Kander & Ebb, and the like. The young actor pressed on, “Really, I want to know, what kind of music do you like?”
At this point I was pretty interested too. I leaned in a little closer to hear her response. She said, “All right. You’re not going to know them, but I’ll tell you anyway.” The first band that she mentioned was the Trash Can Sinatras. WHAT!? What did she say? Did she say the Trash Can Sinatras? No way! She also mentioned The Jayhawks and Aztec Camera! I bounded over the rows of seats between us and elbowed the young actor out of the way. Slightly winded from hurdling over the seats, I told her I had never known anyone whose favorite bands were the ones she had just mentioned.
We spent the rest of the rehearsals talking about music, films and life. Once the tour hit the road, we would sit together on the tour bus and share music with each other. We bought one of those headphone audio adapters that allow you to plug two headphones into one portable CD player. We listened to all kinds of music, and of course we listened to Cake by the Trash Can Sinatras, the band that brought us together. This was love.
