A Happy Pocket was the third studio album to be recorded and released in September 1996 by The Trash Can Sinatras. It would be their last for eight years, and when they returned, they were now calling themselves Trashcan Sinatras, and that’s what has been used ever since.
The first two albums Cake (1990) and I’ve Seen Everything (1993) had been minor successes in that they reached #55 and #50 respectively. A Full Pocket peaked at #77 and not too long afterwards, with their label Go! Discs having been acquired by the behemoth that is Universal Music, the band was dropped. In due coursed this led to the band being declared bankrupt, and the subsequent financial and legal complexities had a bearing on why it took so long for a fourth album to appear.
There had already been three singles taken from the album , none of which reached the Top 100, when it was decided to issue the cover of To Sir, With Love, a 1967 #11 hit in the UK for Lulu, but which was actually the best-selling single of that year in the USA, thanks in large part to it being the theme song of a highly successful film of the same name.
The idea in the first place for TCS to do the cover came from singer Frank Reader, primarily as it reminded him of being young and hearing it sung by female relatives ‘doing their turn’ at household parties. It was also a time when many of the popular bands of the time were going down the road of recording what could best be described as ‘soundtrack-influenced, synth-strings driven torch songs’, so this recording wasn’t as left field as might perhaps be imagined:-
mp3: The Trash Can Sinatras – To Sir, With Love
The song received a lot more airplay than other TCS singles, thanks to it being named single of the week by Radio 1 DJ Simon Mayo who at the time was the presenter of the late afternoon/early evening slot known as Drivetime. It would eventually reach the giddy heights of #80.
There were three other songs on the CD single:-
mp3: The Trash Can Sinatras – Claw
mp3: The Trash Can Sinatras – A Boy And A Girl
mp3: The Trash Can Sinatras – You Only Live Twice
The band have since said they regret not including Claw on A Happy Pocket given it is the sort of slow, atmospheric and shimmering sort of song they were increasingly moving towards, and would do so to great effect on later records.
A Boy And A Girl was one that was left over from the album sessions and features a co-vocal from guitarist John Douglas.
The last of the songs is, of course, a cover of a Bond theme. It’s quite a faithful take on things musically, albeit Frank’s falsetto vocal is different. It would later be used as part of a soundtrack to a theatrical production of Irvine Welsh‘s novel Maribou Stork Nightmares, which I recall seeing but not particularly enjoying at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow in early 1996.
A HUGE THANKS TO CRAIG McALLISTER AS MUCH OF THE ABOVE IS SOURCED FROM ‘A FULL POCKET’, HIS DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO ‘A HAPPY POCKET’ WHICH WAS PUBLISHED TO COMMEMORATE THE RE-PRESS OF THE ALBUM BY LAST NIGHT FROM GLASGOW IN 2023
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
A truly beautiful cover version.
Flimflamfan
They shoulda been huge!