Two years after Crowded House played their final show on the steps of Sydney Opera House, interest in them remains high. Their fan club still has 13,000 members. The musicians have moved on. Neil Finn who lives in Auckland embarked on a successful solo tour. Drummer Paul Hester runs a beachside cafe in Melbourne and is recording a solo album. Bassist Nick Seymour worked on a film script, briefly joined Deadstar and is currently living in Dublin working on a number of projects, including producing young Welsh band Juniper.

Crowded House's end came with some bitterness. Hester quit midway through a US tour, saying he missed his girlfriend in Australia. A week after telling journalists he was thinking of expanding the line up, Finn suddenly broke the news of a break up during a UK show - stunning other members and its management.

Seymour was furious. He felt that Crowded House had been poised to break into the superstar league. A chuckling Hester now reckons he may have been right. "I didn't realise Crowded House was held in such high esteem," he says. "Bono told Neil that he thought Crowded House was going to be the next great band, and that the Verve were just a pale imitation of Crowded House."

But history never repeats, and the three are close again. In recent months, Neil and Paul were exchanging tapes of Crowded House tracks that didn't see the light of day. After Glow is a collection of leftovers, including the live favourite "I Love You Dawn", Finn's gift to his wife, Sharon Dawn Finn, and "Dr. Livingston" written after Neil spent three weeks visiting refugee camps in Mozambique in 1989.

"Left Hand" was another live face considered not fitting into Temple's mould. "Sacred Cow" and "Anyone Can Tell" were different songs pasted together, at the command of producer Mitchell Froom, who also put the thumbs-down on "Time Immemorial" because it was too folkie. "Help Is Coming", about refugees, is from the final demo session in Auckland (with drummer Peter Jones) before the split. "Lester" is a home demo, and recorded after the Finns' family Dalmatian (and star of the "Weather With You" video, among others), was run over by a car. "Private Universe" is a fabulous stripped down rendition. "Anyone Can Tell" was a bonus on the "Chocolate Cake" single. "Recurring Dream" has appeared on the Ricky & Pete and Tequila Sunrise soundtracks but not on the Crowdies' greatest hits set what that name. "That was a pre-Crowded House track, when we were the Mullanes and Craig Hooper was in the band. At rehearsals one day, he kept playing this riff so loudly, that we couldn't get in even though we were ringing and ringing. Finally we had to flag down a taxi and use his radio to send a message to Craig through his amp, which was on the same wavelength."

Crowded House had a turbulent love/hate relationship. When Tim Finn joined them for a US tour, he complained he was in a psychoanalysis nightmare. "Telly's Gone Bung", with a veiled dig at Kylie and Jason, was cut during a four week period when Seymour was dumped. "I Am In Love", similarly, features Neil on drums after Hester "spat the dummy" (according to Neil) in the studio and went off to bed.

The cut came from the famed Together Alone sessions on the lonely Kare Kare beach in New Zealand where The Piano was filmed. "What I remember most about those sessions was our British producer Youth who brought along his British team who ran around saying the whole place was mystical. Our recording budget included gravel for the road to be built to the lonely beach, and also for the bridge to be reconstructed. The American record company freaked when they saw the bill, 'Are we funding a record or real estate property?'"

From all accounts, there are enough tracks in the vaults to keep Crowded House fans happy. These include After Glow Pt 2, a live album and maybe a collection of Neil's original demos.