All art is quite useless, according to Oscar Wilde
A true blast form the past, this. All the way from those far remembered days of 19 and ninety-one.
A rare moment in the sun for incomparable, Irish indie heroes; the much beloved and missed cult favourites A House.
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The Edwyn Collins helmed "Endless Art" appeared on the band's "Bingo" EP (and was later the lead single to the sublime and modestly-titled collection "I Am The Greatest") released on the acclaimed, but short-lived, Dublin label Setanta.
"Endless Art" was a UK radio hit - and, reaching the Top 50, a relative UK commercial success - for A House (a real achievement by the standards of a leftfield Irish band.)
However, distribution problems impacted upon its sales. In the week that "Endless Art" was the most played song on British radio, the newly formed Setanta label was not able to get enough copies into UK music stores to take advantage of the situation; the sort of commercial ill-luck that sometimes hit A House hard.
"Endless Art" was a UK radio hit - and, reaching the Top 50, a relative UK commercial success - for A House (a real achievement by the standards of a leftfield Irish band.)
However, distribution problems impacted upon its sales. In the week that "Endless Art" was the most played song on British radio, the newly formed Setanta label was not able to get enough copies into UK music stores to take advantage of the situation; the sort of commercial ill-luck that sometimes hit A House hard.
A song whose lyrics could perhaps help you win a pub quiz! One with a unique vocal performance from frontman and lyricist Dave Couse, some great guitar riffs and a delicious borrowing from some guy called Beethoven (Fifth Symphony) in the chorus.
A song that's at once a tribute to an array of artists across various genres (from Bach to Elvis to Shakespeare to Johann Strauss to Sid Vicious to Jack B. Yeats to Ian Curtis) who are all dead, yet still alive in endless time; endless art .... and a castigation of the abasement of art in the current day.
And with the oddball (leading with a Wilde quotation and then rattling off a list of names and birth/death dates) somewhat morbid lyrics (a list of dead blokes, basically .... and Mickey Mouse!) declaimed over a repetitive guitar motif, and counterpointed by the delightful melodies and insistent guitars, it's a real oddity. Indeed, an unforgettable piece of art in its own right.
It's impossible to imagine something as leftfield and brilliant as this being a radio hit or a success in the vapid mainstream charts today. And the bizarre fact that A House's biggest success was a song that's so odd and left of leftfield as "Endless Art" is actually in sych with the band's idiosyncratic uncompromising nature and their dedication to quirky innovative output. Just check, for example, their manifesto of sorts, as spelled out in the powerful, acidic, "take no prisoners" statement of defiance, cum, attack on copycats and the entire music industry itself (which ends in an extended savage scream of rage against the music machine) that is the title track of the "I Am The Greatest" album, on which "Endless Art" appeared ("you wouldn't recognize a new idea if it spat in your face and screamed out!" ... indeed!)
During their dozen years existence, the critically lauded A House (with a core membership of Dave Couse on vocals, Fergal Bunbury on guitar and Martin Healy on bass) were one of the best bands in Ireland - and one of the greatest live acts, to boot - but, despite some amazing singles and albums, the band never achieved the acclaim and commercial success outside the Emerald Isle that they they richly deserved. The curse of a band that were, in many ways, ahead of their time.
Sadly, due to continued lack of significant commercial success, A House broke up in 1997. Their demise was much lamented amongst music fans and critics. Certain publications writing around the time of the band's demise claimed that there were ways in which "A House are far more important than U2" (The Irish Times) and that "their passing also arguably drew the safety curtain on the first and last great pop movement this country has either seen or heard" (Irish Examiner.)
In 2008, a poll of the music critics of the Irish Times rated I Am the Greatest as the third best Irish album of all time (behind only MBV's Loveless and Achtung Baby.) Times critic Tony Clayton-Lea wrote ...
"some would say A House were the best Irish band of the past 30 years, surpassing the usual suspects list by virtue of their uncompromising nature, provocative lyrical stance and perversely discordant approach" so that, on I Am the Greatest, "even after almost 20 years, the impact of songs as emotionally strong and raw as You're Too Young, When I First Saw You, I Am Afraid, I Lied and the spoken-word title track leave the listener wondering how much more they can take."
Oh yeah,the song's got a wonderful video, to boot!
A commentary on the commodification of art, with Couse in and out of various lurid silly Stop Making Sense style suits (except when being unclothed and mummified ... before finally being wrapped in plastic and wheeled away!) belting out the song in front of his two mutating compadres, Fergal Bunbury and Martin Healy, with all sorts of shit going on amongst the ever changing props in the background!
The innovative and playful, stop-motion promo received a lot of praise at the time and gained the band much airplay on MTV Europe.
Oddly - in a collision of the sublime and the ridiculous - when 80's pop-star turned VJ, Paul King called it quits as host of MTV's Greatest Hits, he played the video for "Endless Art" on his final show as one "of those videos that I really do think deserve to be called great and classic."
And here is that great, classic "Endless Art" promo.
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