Its members were Dagmar Krause (vocals), Fred Frith (guitar, bass guitar, violin, keyboards) and Chris Cutler (drums and percussion): Frith wrote the music for most of their songs, and Cutler wrote the words. Art Bears released three studio albums and toured Europe in 1979, before breaking up in 1981. Its members have since occasionally collaborated on other projects; all three took part in the Henry Cow reunion concerts in 2014.
The name "Art Bears" came from a quotation by Jane Ellen Harrison: “Even to-day, when individualism is rampant, art bears traces of its collective, social origin.” Chris Cutler, who chose the name, said that he liked it because it was ambiguous, it had an animal in it, and it was faintly ridiculous.
The band came about when Henry Cow was working on material for its fifth studio album. A number of pieces were under consideration, but there weren’t enough for an album. Some of the pieces had texts that some of the members didn’t like, and music was being written while the band was going to (and in) the studio in Switzerland. Cutler volunteered to write more texts, which Frith duly set to music, and the band recorded these, but disagreement persisted within the group as to whether they all liked what they were doing: Frith, Cutler and Krause liked the new material, but the other members (Tim Hodgkinson, Lindsay Cooper and Georgie Born) didn’t dislike it, they just didn’t think it was Henry Cow.
Eventually—sources disagree about exactly how and when—it was decided that the shorter songs would not be on the next Henry Cow album, but the people who liked them could do something else with them, and that the longer pieces they’d also recorded would make up the next Henry Cow album. … And also that, since Henry Cow evidently couldn’t agree about its direction, it should break up.
Whatever exactly happened, Henry Cow ceased to exist in late 1978, and Art Bears came about: the first Art Bears album, Hopes and Fears, had been mostly recorded by all the members of Henry Cow under the impression that it’d be the next Henry Cow album, and the remainder by only three of them, under the knowledge that it wouldn’t be. The members of the band who weren’t involved in Art Bears were rather bitter about that.
Hopes and Fears was the first and last Art Bears album to feature anyone other than Krause, Cutler and Frith: their other albums, Winter Songs and The World As It Is Today feature only those three, although when they played live they augmented their lineup with other musicians.
Studio Discography:
- 1978 - Hopes and Fears
- 1979 - Winter Songs
- 1981 - The World As It Is Today
- 2004 - The Art Box: compilation of their three albums, a two-disc Remix Album and a bonus disc of other tracks.
Art Bears’ music contains examples of:
- Adventurous Irish Violins: More like Adventurous Eastern European Violins, given that Fred Frith is a fan of Bulgarian music, but his violin creates this effect on songs such as "The Dance", "The Hermit" and "Moeris Dancing".
- All Drummers Are Animals: Subverted. Chris Cutler has an incredibly flamboyant playing style, with much twirling of sticks, etc.; he was a big fan of Keith Moon as a youth, which is especially obvious in a song like "In Two Minds", but he's also an extremely cerebral and intelligent musician who wrote all the lyrics for Art Bears' songs, and has published a couple of books of his writings about music. The lyrics from Winter Songs are all inspired by carvings in Amiens Cathedral.
- Capitalism Is Bad: Quite a few of their songs are about this, notably “Song of the Dignity of Labour under Capital”. Subverted with "The Song of Investment Capital Overseas", which is sung from the point of view of capitalism.
- Careful with That Axe: A number of their songs have terrifying screams from Dagmar Krause. Played for Black Comedy in the remix track "summer/freedom" by John Oswald, which mashes up screaming from Arts Bears’ "Freedom" with an arrangement of the theme from "A Summer Place".
- Grief Song: "On Suicide", actually by Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler, covered on their first album.
- Harsh Vocals: Dagmar Krause, who has two voices, a chest one and a head one. The former is this.
- Noise Rock: They have elements of this, especially when Fred Frith cranks up his guitar. A good example is the live track "Coda to Man and Boy", where his guitar is just on the edge of going crazy with feedback.
- Remix Album: Their boxed set The Art Box includes one of these, Art Bears Revisited, with remixes, reworkings and entirely new pieces based on their songs, by a variety of Special Guests.
- Sdrawkcab Speech: The vocal on the beginning of "First Things First" is played first backwards, then forwards.
- Shout-Out: "In Two Minds" is musically this to The Who: the lead-in on the chorus is the same as the opening of "Baba O’Riley".
- Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: A characteristic of Chris Cutler’s lyrics.
- Surprisingly Gentle Song: "The Pirate Song", by Tim Hodgkinson, which Frith was still admiring some 36 years later.
- Three Chords and the Truth: The chorus of "In Two Minds", although Georgie Born’s monstrous fuzz bassline is subverting the hell out of it.
