Front page	From the Event Guide archive! This article refers to an event which took place on, or until, 24 July 2002 A House A Great Place To Live Dave Roberts meets with the dynamic duo of '80's Irish indie. Five years and no interviews later, Ferg Bunbury and Dave Couse, both integral parts of A House (Martin has decided he’s not going to be here until 1pm, producing much good natured abuse mirth from his former band mates) are sitting in the Clarence, lording it up over mineral waters ("I’ve just had a flashback, they asked me for my room number" quips Ferg) surveying Bono’s furniture and looking at what could be seen as their reward for twelve years and five albums of very fine indie pop, a Greatest Hits CD. During that time they made great records, took a lot of cheques from record companies, wrote some timeless classic tunes and, above all, drank a lot of beer on very wobbly ferries. ‘The best Of A House 04.85-02.97' is a record which piggybacks their surprise belated hit with a world cup song, and which may set the ground for Couse’s return with an Edwyn Collins produced solo album by the end of the year. As always, Couse and Bunbury act like loveable rogues. Couse’s acerbic wit was always perfectly complimented by Bunbury's spiky guitar lines and, for a whole generation in the late Eighties, they were the kings of indie. Stuff all those bands playing the U2 game, A House wanted to make records, and, in hindsight, they succeeded admirably. They were the dogs bollocks. So, to the new record. Dave gets the ball rolling "It was EMI’s idea, in all credit to them. They sorted it all out and got the rights from Warners for the early stuff. A lot of it is off the back of the World Cup thing, which sparked it, believe it or not." 'The Best Of...' comes out in the U.K. on Setanta, but with their profile revived considerably here courtesy of ‘Here Come The Good Times’, it’s more likely to trouble their hometown charts. Dave speaks with a glow of pleasure of the whole world cup experience that has given him his first number 1. "It was for all the family, and I’m really proud that someone should chose one of our songs to represent the team to go to the World Cup. It’s the fact they’ve taken a song that was already ours, we didn’t have to write a song which we mightn’t have done." With five albums to pick from, choosing songs for this album could have taken forever. Ferg says "It was easy enough. For the main album, we all made up a list of 19, and 16 were on everybody’s list. The rarities (an extra limited edition CD) were more difficult." "I slipped up not putting ‘Heart Happy’ (third single) on it" acknowledges Ferg. Dave laughs "‘Well, I Think I’m Going Mad’ is not on it ("listening back to the lyrics, they’re crap. I got the art of writing of lyrics a lot better after that. I thought I’m not having that represent me for ever). The fans have got all this stuff, so they’re going to come up with stuff they don’t have." We pick over the songs. "This is our lap of honour, this is the A House album people are likely to buy in five years time" says Dave. "We always tried to control everything down to the smallest little thing" says Ferg, which is why he took control of the artwork, a characteristically chunky booklet with a synopsis of the band. Dave’s acerbic wit comes back when asked about the possibility of a live album of the final tear jerking Olympia show. "I hate Live albums, a live thing is blood and tears and sweat. It’s part of life. If you missed it, you missed it. People die all the time. You can’t have everything you want in life. Going to gigs requires making an effort. If you wanted to be there, you should have been there." Couse shrugs in annoyance about the fact that a Melody Maker journalist noticed that all the names in ‘Endless Art’ were male, "it was annoying, a hundred male names, so what? We had to sit around and come up with the names", Ferg interjects, "We didn’t want really obscure names, so we picked 100 of the 200 or 300 we had on the list which had males and females. We never even fucking thought. We just went with the names that worked singing over the track." They talk about their promising start in the U.S. after ‘On Our Big Fat Merry Go Around’ came out on Sire. "The shows were full, we were on the radio. 'Call Me Blue’ was a big hit, it was all over the place. After that you don’t want to be going nowhere in America. The record company hated ‘I Want Too Much’, and I’m not surprised." "At the time I remember thinking that some of these recordings cost an outrageous amount of money, but now they sound sonically so much better then what gets released nowadays, so I’m really happy about that now. We always wanted to make timeless albums. We never got involved in fads, we were always before a fad or after a fad but we never got involved. Mike Hedges said "you know you’re going to get dropped for this" after recording ‘I Want Too Much’, but he said if we ever wanted to record again, he’d help. And he did, with ‘No More Apologies’, even though he’d just finished doing ‘A Design For Life’ by the Manics and he was the most in-demand producer in the world." So was ‘No More Apologies’ a difficult album to make? Couse laughs, "We ended up broke but in France with wine and good food in the sunshine, although we were doing interviews pretending that we weren’t breaking up." Ever the funny men, the Laurel and Hardy of Eighties pop finish on a high note when I ask what Dave has been doing in the five years. He laughs, "can I nick Michael Crawford’s great quote "Failure takes as long as success", I have been doing things but it takes a few years to get focussed again. Have you heard Ferg’s John Lennon quote?" which prompts Ferg to quip "Hi, I’m, John Lennon." 'The Best of A House: 04.85 — 02.97' is out now on EMI, with a limited number containing a rarities CD. The Event Guide has two copies to give away to the first two people into Road Records on 16B Fade Street to say "Nine long months I’ve spent, thinking of you".