… about a selectively remembered golden era of hopscotch, Creamola Foam and corporal punishment. But this wasn’t any old nostalgia. This wasn’t the work of inexplicably embittered boomers who bought their huge Victorian town houses for £5000 in 1973 and aren’t too keen on foreigners. This was modern nostalgia, driven by Gen Z and relating to the distant days of…2016.

Let’s leave aside the fact that 2016 has basically only just happened and focus instead on the choice of year. Yes, it was ten years ago, and we do like round numbers. But my clear memory of 2016 is everyone saying how uniquely shit it was. We lost Carrie Fisher, Prince and Victoria Wood; we gained Brexit, President Trump and the Zika virus. There may have been worse years since – though that’s partly down to the knock-on effect of things that happened in 2016.

The first sign that we were in for a rough one came early. Two days after releasing the joyously received album Blackstar on his 69th birthday, David Bowie died. When the news broke, even people who hardly knew his music reacted with shock. Almost every radio DJ who wasn’t already on air talking about Bowie was whisked to a news studio to talk about Bowie.

On BBC 6 Music, they interviewed so many people about their memories that by mid-afternoon, Mark Radcliffe found himself discussing the great man with Def Leppard singer Joe Elliott, who might not immediately strike you as Bowie-adjacent.

I was taken aback at the news, but I wouldn’t claim I was grieving as many people clearly were. I liked Bowie a lot, and only as I’ve got older has it dawned on me just how bonkers and amazing his ‘70s shape-shifting must have been to witness. But I wasn’t a friend or superfan, so it didn’t hit me viscerally. It wasn’t as if he was my all-time favourite – that was between the Phantom Band and the Trashcan Sinatras.

In summer 2026 – or ‘the new 2016’ as it was fleetingly known – the Trashcan Sinatras released Ever the Optimist, their first album since the old 2016. Three days later, John Douglas – guitarist, co-singer, key songwriter and beating heart of the band – died aged just 62. Like Bowie, he’d kept his illness private which, added to the fact we were still getting to know the album, made it all the harder to take in.

Not long before, it emerged that the band had reconvened for a secret gig and video shoot in their hometown of Irvine. Fans speculated that they might be back on the road soon. In fact, it was the warmest of farewells.

The parallels with early 2016 were remarkable – though I’ve yet to hear Joe Elliott’s take on it – and I don’t suppose John would have minded the Bowie comparison too much. But unlike Bowie’s death, this really did hit me.

Not just for the thousands of hours I’ve spent with the Trashcans’ music, but because of all the memories and milestones that come with following an artist since childhood. I remember buying the I’ve Seen Everything album on cassette from Our Price, sight unseen – and more to the point, sound unheard – purely because I’d read they sounded a lot like Aztec Camera.

They didn’t to me, and still don’t, but I loved it anyway. The idea of spending seven quid on an album (a fair sum to a 15-year-old in 1993) without ever having heard the band sounds bizarre now, but it definitely helped an attachment to form. I was, in a literal sense, invested.

Since then there have been records purchased, memorable gigs attended – one involving a farcical misunderstanding with a musical hero about drummers who are also funeral directors, but that’s a story for another day – and friends made.

I can trace a path from discovering the Trashcans to meeting my partner and many of my best pals. Now, as parent to a young child, half of the ‘lullabies’ I sing her to sleep with are Trashcans songs, with many a John Douglas composition among them.

So thank you John – you didn’t know me, but I feel your loss as if I knew you. I was going to say that you made my life immeasurably better, but that’s a lazy phrase and not quite true.

You made it measurably better, and you’ll continue to do so.

Tom Wheeler