That was an era where the phrase "alternative music" meant something. It didn't describe a genre but instead referred to pretty much every band who wasn't on commercial radio or Countdown.

They were the alternative to the mainstream and there were heaps of bands, but they existed away from the gaze of a lot of people.

One of those band's was Appel's Lighthouse Keepers. His book Confessions of a Lighthouse Keeper is a personal story of a band that formed in Canberra in 1981 and released a few singles and one album (featuring perhaps their best-known song Ocean Liner) before breaking up in 1986.

In that time, they played all over the country and toured Europe. Appel says plenty of people have never heard of them, but there are still fans out there - including former federal minister Tanya Plibersek - happy to reminisce about old times via his book.

But back to the photo of the book cover which could be from the Strawberry Hills Hotel or the Southern Cross Hotel - the memories have faded a bit after 40-odd years.

The band is set up under a TV set (which some regular probably objected to being turned off so the band could play) and on the floor.

That's because so many of the venues that booked bands in the 1980s - and there were a lot of them - didn't have stages. You just set your gear up anywhere there was space.

Another of the many photos in Appel's book shows the band playing while wedged up against a pinball machine.

Appel describes the Lighthouse Keepers' following as a "niche audience", saying they were one of a large number of bands in the then-stratified music scene.

"The Australian scene had so many layers," he says.

"There was the layer that the Jimmy Barnes' of the world inhabited, then the various layers below that where you could play Rooty Hill RSL and get 400 people and under that there were other bands, and then there was us who would get 100 to 200 people in Sydney."

While Appel had been in bands both before and after the Lighthouse Keepers, it wasn't with the aim of moving up a few layers in the Australian music world.

"When I was in Canberra me and my friends formed a punk band, which was what was going on at the time," he says.

"I guess we wanted to get on a stage, which was a positive about punk, you could just get up and do it.

"To a degree I think I was ambitious, but lazily ambitious. And once the Lighthouse Keepers got going it felt like there was a natural limit to it. I don't think we were that ambitious, just ambitious enough to get onstage, travel around and go overseas."

The band managed to get that far with just one fight; albeit that was onstage in front of an audience, between drunk bass player "Hairy" O'Neil and angry drummer Steve.

Appel later asked both of them about it; Hairy didn't remember a thing, while Steve figured they'd gone all right as a band if that was the only fight they ever had.

And he's right. "A lot of bands, they're fighting all the time," Appel says.

"It's like a family, which is difficult anyway, but you're stuck together, you're starting to get older, you've got a hangover most of the time.

"There are just a lot of things that can go wrong."

Despite breaking up more than 30 years ago, it seems there are still people keen on the Lighthouse Keepers. Appel says the Ocean Liner clip still gets views on YouTube, while the band's Facebook page stays active even if he wasn't posting anything.

It's that sort of thing that led him to write the book because, as he says "the interest stayed there".

"It seemed to be part of my life that people are interested in," he says.

"The reaction to this has been 'oh that was important to me and I'm glad you've made a sort of historical record of it'."

The band has played together since, but Appel isn't interested in booking gigs to tie in with the book - because it would mean staying up late.

"Even I don't want to go anywhere past about nine and I'd be unlikely to go to a gig - the gig would almost have to be in my house to make me do it."

Confessions of a Lighthouse Keeper is available at www.spontaneousfilms.com.au. Appel will also be doing a Wollongong City Libraries author talk on October 23 at 6.30pm. The event is limited to 16 people and tickets are available through the library.

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