Episode Notes

Episode seventeen of To Here Knows When - Great Irish Albums Revisited focuses on I Want Too Much by A House.

“We knew our only survival method was to go there [Inisbofin] and be single-minded in our approach to making this record, we knew we wanted it brash, we knew we wanted it loud and fast. We knew the cohesion was missing from the first album and we were absolutely determined to get it on this one.”
Dave Couse

“I Want Too Much is the ultimate Indie guitar Irish record that made everything after that possible. You can do this – you can make a record that angry and cohesive with Mike Hedges on Inisbofin and release it into the world and be proud of it. There’s not a note on it that I would change. I think it’s a really important record, no one will acknowledge it now but all those Irish guitar bands of the last few years – that’s where it’s from. You can do it, you don’t have to be English or American, you can be from Dublin and make this record and make it sound this fucking good and this fucking hard.”
Fergal Bunbury

I’m joined on this episode by Dave Couse and Fergal Bunbury. It’s a long chat that takes in many aspects of the career of A House. Dave and Fergal pay tribute to Cathal Coughlan, A House is Dead at the NCH, meeting producer Mike Hedges and recording I Want Too Much on Inisbofin, how A House were struggling for survival at the time, the Abbey Road sound desk and equipment that Mike Hedges brought to Inisbofin, mixing the album in Abbey Road, signing to Setanta Records, working with Edwyn Collins on I Am the Greatest, releasing ‘Endless Art’ and Setanta’s cash-flow and distribution problems, signing with Parlophone Records and reissuing ‘Endless Art’, the Pre Extinction Tapes – the archive project that Fergal and Dave have been working on to document A House’s entire recording career, recording No More Apologies with Mike Hedges in France, Dave talks about bringing what he learned recording I Want Too Much to his production of Grand Parade by The Frank & Walters, and much more.   

I know some people will think, why hasn’t he dedicated an Episode of the podcast to I Am the Greatest?

I too love I Am the Greatest – it’s a fantastic album. I was just as excited as others when Dave Couse and Fergal Bunbury reconvened as A House is Dead to play the album in its entirety in 2019 at the National Concert Hall and become the second recipients, after Microdisney, of the  NCH/IMRO Trailblazer Award

But, I Want Too Much is a very different album, recorded under a unique set of circumstances in the Doonmore Hotel on Inisbofin, seven miles off the Galway coast in deepest winter in late 1989. The band didn’t have the big hit that was expected of them with their debut album, On Our Big Fat Merry-Go-Round, they was pressure from the record company, the writing was on the wall. But rather than kowtow to the expectations of the industry they went off and recorded one of the angriest, abrasive, raw, yet cohesive albums of its or any other time. How single-minded is that? Simply put, there would be no I Am the Greatest if the experience of making I Want Too Much the way they did hadn’t happened. I Want Too Much is an incredible album.

Where did Dave Couse record his vocals? Where did Fergal Bunbury put his amps that produced one of the rawest guitar sounds I’ve ever heard? After lunch as I got up to leave and make my way back to the Ferry, I felt the sudden urge to take a memento from Inisbofin to commemorate the recording of this great album.
I’m not particularly proud of it, but I stole an ashtray from a table in the bar, I wrapped it in my wet towel and I placed it carefully in my bag. I took it home with me. I gave up smoking decades ago but I still have the ashtray. To most it would simply be a worthless piece of brown glass promoting a French cognac – but to me it’s priceless.  

For Further Reading/Listening:

To Here Knows When column in The Goo on I Want Too Much…

In my introduction to this episode I quote from a 2003 interview that Niall Crumlish conducted with Dave Couse around the time of Dave’s Genes album release. Niall has posted the full transcript of that interview on his great Psychiatry and Songs blog. It can be read here.

I Want Too Much can be heard below:

A House’s The Pre Extinction Tapes are on Spotify. The most recent compilation Because You Love Me covers the period before the band recorded their fourth album Wide-Eyed and Ignorant.