Formed in Dublin in 1985 by former members of the band Last Chance, vocalist Dave Couse, guitarist Fergal Bunbury, Drummer Dermot Wylie were joined by bassist Martin Healy (who had all been schoolfriends at Templeogue College), came together as A House.
[3] The band honed their live skills in the pubs of Dublin, performing in McGonagle's club (best known internationally as the venue where U2 cut their teeth in the late seventies), at free gigs in the Phoenix Park, and turns on RTÉ's TV GaGa and Dave Fanning's radio sessions.
Recording a John Peel Session for BBC radio in the United Kingdom,[5] and gaining regional popularity, the band signed with Blanco y Negro who released the singles "Heart Happy" and "Call Me Blue" in Ireland and the UK.
A promo version of "Call Me Blue" for the US tour included a track labelled "Some Intense Irish Brogue" which was a short interview with the band.
Even in Ireland, however, some listeners found Couse's "yelp of a voice"[6] not quite suited to the slightly quirky but basically mainstream rock style of Merry-Go-Round.
The video was memorable, and the song itself – somewhat unusual in its musical approach, and even more so in its lyrics, which led off with a quotation from Oscar Wilde and ran through an extensive roster of famous artists from various fields, all dead, with years of births and deaths specified – stabilized the band as a cult favorite among indie lovers, and is the paradigm of the surprisingly successful "list" style of song which Couse has frequently used (the first example of this style had been the title track on I Want Too Much).
Lyrically, the songs on the record addressed themes running from satire of societal and religious pieties, through excruciating examinations of personal fears, to the title track, on which the three core band members ruminate in spoken word fashion on their lives, their regrets, their jealousies, and the state of music in the 1990s.
Wide-Eyed and Ignorant was released in 1994 to little notice outside of the band's fan-base, although the single "Here Come the Good Times" was A House's only UK Top 40 chart placing, reaching number 37.
In the popular music market place this was probably largely because the band refused to do anything but their own thing, which lent extra resonance to the title of their fifth and final album, No More Apologies, released in 1996.
It was already known that A House would call it quits the year after that, but No More Apologies, a collection of "twisted beauties", allowed them bow out, masters till of themselves and of "disturbing melodies reflecting the world as seen through their own, strangely coloured, spectacles".
But no one wanted to leave the Olympia, and A House went out on a high,[15] producing Even so, five years later Couse could still wonder how the apparent fondness of so many fans for his band had never really carried over to record sales.
[19] AV8 recorded an album called Tremor, and was still a going concern in 2002, albeit with a name change to "Sweet Hereafter",[7] but may now be defunct as Healy, with David Morrissey, is currently part of Mark Cullen's Pony Club.
To date he has released two LP's (This is Not For You and We Were Not There at the Beginning) and six EP's (EP1;40 Shades of Greed, EP2;We Will Never Make These Numbers Work and EP3;Tinsel, EP4;Variations in A Major, EP5; Here Come the Bad Times and EP6; Out of Tempo).