{"id":256,"date":"2007-02-08T23:15:31","date_gmt":"2007-02-09T04:15:31","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2007-02-09T14:21:07","modified_gmt":"2007-02-09T14:21:07","slug":"the-poor-man-s-smiths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-poor-man-s-smiths\/","title":{"rendered":"The Poor Man&#8217;s Smiths?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8qYXRDAsL7o?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><br \/>\nI was thinking about <strong>The Trashcan Sinatras<\/strong> the other day. Now some of you may not even know who they are and some of you may not even care. And perhaps a few of you on here may even already know them and like them. They&#8217;re a Scottish indie-pop band who have been around since the late &#8217;80s. As evidenced by the video above for their 1993 single &#8220;Hayfever&#8221;, they were often tagged in the press as <strong>&#8220;the poor man&#8217;s Smiths&#8221;<\/strong>. Of course this isn&#8217;t entirely accurate. Sure some of their material bears more than a passing resemblance to that of <strong>Morrissey<\/strong> and <strong>Marr<\/strong>, but more often than not, it can also resemble bands as diverse as Aztec Camera, <strong>Prefab Sprout<\/strong>, The Housemartins (and by extension, The Beautiful South) and <strong>Orange Juice<\/strong> while simultaneously forging a unique identity all their own. <\/p>\n<p>After an 8-year hiatus, The Trashcan Sinatras came back in 2004 with the masterful <em>Weightlifting<\/em>, showing a depth, maturity, and poise that can only come with age and experience. In that way they&#8217;re similar to <strong>Nick Lowe&#8217;s more recent records<\/strong> in that they&#8217;re definitely about making music for adults, but not in the generic adult-contemporary sense of the word. Now I know a lot of you dislike The Smiths and other similar artists, but other than going on about the greatness of The Trashcan Sinatras, <em>there&#8217;s another, more pressing (and more vital to RTH) question at the heart of this post<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>What bands that are generally considered <strong>&#8220;2nd division&#8221;<\/strong> do you like better than those to whom they get compared to? Are you a bigger <strong>Undertones<\/strong> fan than a <strong>Ramones<\/strong> fan (as I am)? Do you prefer The Kinks or even <strong>The Small Faces<\/strong> to the Fab Four or The Stones? <strong>Survivor<\/strong> to Journey? I think you see my point here. I look forward to seeing your responses on this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was thinking about The Trashcan Sinatras the other day. Now some of you may not even know who they are and some of you may not even care. And perhaps a few of you on here may even already know them and like them. They&#8217;re a Scottish indie-pop band who have been around since <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-poor-man-s-smiths\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}