ANNALISSE MORROW

The Numbers have long since disbanded but revisiting their album is a rewarding experience.Almost two decades of living a normal life, of only occasionally being reminded of a smokier, noisier past, Annalisse Morrow finds herself once again doing interviews. And it is a strange sensation.

There's a compilation of the music she recorded with her older brother Chris in the band the Numbers between 1979 and 1982 floating about called Numerology. It's littered with three-piece power-pop gems such as ''Five Letter Word'' and ''The Modern Song'', meatier, danceable stuff such as ''Big Beat'', crunchy rock such as ''Blacktown'' and even the high-energy, post-punk fare from their first foray into the recording studio.

It's often very good, rarely time-locked and clearly overdue. What's more, people are coming out of the woodwork declaring their fandom and, in the case of men who "came of age" watching the blonde bass player performing on Countdown (or peering out from under the heavy fringe at a gig), declaring their teenage crushes.

Which is all flattering but slightly disturbing to Morrow. She may have been nominated for the old Queen of Pop gong (she lost out to the spandex-wearing Christie Allen) but she is not that far from the shy young woman she was back in the day when the Monty Python-loving band travelled around Australia in a Valiant. "We just thought it would get released and would sit in a few shops then [the label] rang up and said, could you do an interview? And I went, 'What do you mean, an interview?' " Morrow says, shaking her head. "I just didn't think that people would be interested enough. I didn't think we had a lot of fans but the feedback we've been getting from the interviews has been really rather nice. At the time you didn't know how much people appreciated what you were doing because we were all growing up together. People didn't speak to each other or express themselves the way they do now or have the tools to."

The Morrows, who were the only constant members during the band's lifetime, were approached by Ted Lethborg of Melbourne label Aztec Music (it would never have occurred to either of the unassuming siblings to do it), who had resorted to calling every Morrow in NSW and asking if they were related to Chris and Annalisse. "It's just nice to be considered important enough for someone to want to put it out on CD, to be archived, logged, remembered," the younger Morrow says.

These days a design teacher at TAFE - Chris also works in higher education, on the Far North Coast of NSW - Morrow doesn't perform any more. The desire hasn't gone away ("The one thing I miss is singing," she says, adding with a laugh, "And I still can't get used to getting up in the morning."). But the end to the band she and Chris put together in the late '80s, the Maybe Dolls, left her at a loss. "It got to the point where I couldn't listen to anybody singing for quite some time," she confesses. Which is not to say that a reunion show has been ruled out. After all, if far less accomplished groups such as the Uncanny X-Men can reform, surely someone can talk the Morrows around. But if nothing else, the reissue of these Numbers songs has brought back a lot of the good feelings and memories and they aren't necessarily the ones you might expect.

"The best moments were not the huge event; they weren't playing the bigger shows," Morrow says. "It was just realising that you could hit a note that you never thought you would hit, but you were in the moment and you went for it. Or turning around and looking at my brother and watching him play the most incredible guitar solo and realising that I'd stopped playing for a second because I was so mesmerised. "Things like being the host of Countdown weren't a highlight; I was terrified. Terrified, terrified, terrified. Chris chickened out on me because we were supposed to do it together, but he said, 'No, you'll be fine on your own.' I told them you have to write everything out on cards because I won't be able to ad lib. I hardly spoke to anyone when I was that young. I had all these kids around me just staring at my nostril while I was saying to myself, 'Try to be cool. Try to be cool."'

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