KEY POINTS:
Andrew Fagan hopes the release of a compilation album by the 1980s rock band The Mockers will at least give him peace of mind.
Newly released Woke Up Today: The Definitive Collection, includes a large number of the band's songs from across their musical career.
Fagan, the band's
slightly eccentric frontman, agrees it's long time to wait to do such a release but says he feels it was necessary.
"Yes, it was a total afterthought -- like 20-years after," he says.
"But when I came back from the UK in 2002 I was fairly uncomfortable to notice that Forever Tuesday Morning was the only song synonymous with The Mockers."
He says despite what people probably remember, there was a lot more to the band than that song.
"It's gratifying to have an audience, I mean it's better to have an audience than not, but as I said, the band became synonymous with just one song when we actually had quite a few singles."
Also, the band never released a compilation album and everything they did (one live and three studio albums) was only ever released on vinyl. Getting part of the catalogue on to compact disc was an added incentive, Fagan says.
About 13 different people played in The Mockers over the years according to Fagan's calculations. They came and went for various reasons.
"Everyone comes together with a mutual interest, but quite often when you move towns or something your whole focus changes."
Losing interest, money issues or tiring of being on the road may have contributed, he says.
The Mockers had a punk vibe about them but played sing-along music that won them plenty of younger fans around New Zealand.
Fagan says touring and living a rock and roll lifestyle was fun, but the band got around a lot and eventually started feeling a bit saturated in New Zealand.
"We were in a band and that (the fun) was one of the incentives of getting in a band really ... there was also a kind of cavalier attitude that goes with being in a touring band," he says.
"You roll into town play the gig and are off again in the hire van the next morning, it was like a bit of a boy's club."
Things changed though, and by about the mid-1980s the band started talking about putting their energy into a shift overseas.
Fagan, a keen sailor, was the first to go and the other members followed.
Together they experienced the realities of going from being a big fish in the New Zealand musical pond to being a tiny one in London.
"If you used a sailing analogy I'd say we kind of got becalmed in the lee of the tall London buildings.
"There was a lot of wash and unfortunately it wasn't wash from the spectator crowd but wash from the bigger vessels, and that slowed down our boat speed enormously."
He says a lot of the energy got diluted by having to stay alive and earn a living.
"As a band we spent more time in the practice room than we did playing live. That in a way can be quite destructive."
The Mockers eventually dissolved but Fagan subsequently spent many years in London, most of them living on a couple of house boats on the Thames River canals.
He played in a band called Lig for years in England and has plenty of recorded material from that project that he intends turning into an album.
These days he does the programming at Kiwi FM, hosting a regular slot with his long-time partner Karyn Hay, and is probably as up with the play in terms of new local music as anyone in the country.
He has also written a book and a few collections of poetry and remains a sailing enthusiast. At the start of the year he sailed solo around New Zealand in his 5.2m yacht Swirly World -- a boat which is officially the smallest to do so.
He says he's doubtful whether many people will buy the new album but is pleased to have it released.
* Woke Up Today: The Definitive Collection, is out now
- NZPA