Baiting the hook

November 4, 2005

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2005/11/03/1130823332215.html


Spiderbait are back with the help of Black Betty.
Photo: Simon Schluter

Spiderbait has made a career out of songs about everyday things. Patrick Donovan talks to the trio about their Greatest Hits album.

"I went down to the Circle K/Saw Kieran on the way/ bought myself a sausage roll/ cost too much and it was cold" - Circle K, Spiderbait

These are the words to one of Spiderbait's first songs. You could understand if record companies didn't go troppo over their hit-making potential back then. Two of their next two songs Footy (chorus: "I like footy, I like footy, I like footy and kick that footy") and Scenester ("hey look at me I'm a scenester"), wouldn't have started a bidding war.

But those three songs have been included on the Greatest Hits CD of one of Australia's most popular bands, Spiderbait. And the lyrics to those songs go some way to explaining their endearing endurance.

Their songs are about normal people doing normal things - going to the footy, eating sausage rolls. They even covered a song by underrated Goodies music man Bill Oddie (Run).

Their sound is fun, loud and simple, with all of the retro crash-bang of a bowling alley (hence EG's photo shoot at Kingpin). They are armed with two contrasting singers and consistently play well live.

Whitt's heavily distorted fuzz guitar and power metal chords, Janet's funky basslines and teenage girl anthems, and Kram's irreverent mellifluous vocals became the soundtrack for the 1990s Australian teenager.

The band formed in the early 1990s when Kram, Whitt and Janet still lived in Finley, southern NSW. One day, Whitt raced home from school with a truly original punk-metal-country-fusion song called Old Man Sam.

"That tune was just kicking around my boarding house," says Whitt. "It was just a joke, an old folk song that no one knew the origins of. But we grew up with a lot of country music in Finley, on the radio or in people's backyards."

"It's funny, we've played that song all over the world, and wherever we play it, people who have never heard it before are amazed," says Kram. "They say, 'How do you make that work?' It's so out there. It's ridiculous but impressive at the same time."

It was frustrating for young music lovers growing up in the country with no Triple J, but their isolation helped them forge a unique sound.

"The songs in the early days were all over the shop," adds Kram, "because that's the way that we got into music. You had to go to Shepparton to buy CDs, and the radio was a little bit of country, lots of Top 40. It was a major breakthrough to be able to tune into ABC radio so we could tape the songs played on Countdown."

It came as a huge shock when they discovered Melbourne's punk scene in the early 1990s.

"We didn't know who the Saints or the Stooges even were," says Kram. "I remember when I first came to Melbourne, driving past the Tote and seeing the word 'God' painted on the wall and I thought it was a religious gathering ... Our naivete has helped us be more of a unique group, and in the long run it's helped set us apart from everyone else."

The band were so dedicated in the early days that from the tram stop outside their flat on the corner of Burke and Whitehorse roads in Camberwell, they would direct the traffic, load their gear and ride to Chapel Street for rehearsal.

"We didn't think it was unusual at the time, we just thought that's how you got around," says Janet.

"We never expected to make an album, let alone a single," says Kram, who got the highest year 12 score in the state for drumming and singing but eventually decided against music school.

"One of the main reasons I f---ed up at music school was that I wanted to do this. I was playing with all of these amazing musicians at Melbourne Uni but I was being told what to play and what to do. When I jammed with my band, there was something special about it. It wasn't as good musically but it was an indefinable special magic. For me, that is what rock'n'roll is all about - finding that thing that you are and no one else is. That search for individuality is so important, and I think we stumbled on it. For good bands there has to be friendship and something unique about the chemistry."

Spiderbait's fresh, dynamic sound, inspired by local bands the Cosmic Psychos, the Hard-ons and Tumbleweed, got them a deal with Au Go Go Records. They were part of Melbourne's alternative band scene when it was swallowed by the mainstream in the early 1990s. What was that transition like?

"It was great because we were finally offered big money," says Kram. "Anyone from any band would like to be able to make a living out of it, without having to change the way we played music or the way we were. We had been around for years and we felt like we earnt it."

"We were in a pretty unique position in that the labels came sniffing because there were people queueing up to get into our shows," says Janet. "It was a curious time, because there was a frenzy of signings, and people didn't really know what the future held."

They wrote about being the centre of a bidding war in their national hit Buy Me a Pony, which became the first Australian song to top Triple J's Hottest 100 in 1996.

"That song is saying, 'This is what they're going to throw at you'," says Kram. "It's up to you to get what you can out of it by being smart."

"It's funny reading those stories about people from Bardot or Australian Idol complaining, 'I can't believe they exploited me'," says Janet. "What do you think the whole point of the exercise was?"

Over 10 years the band evolved from loading their own gear on the tram to becoming one of Universal's biggest local bands, selling close to a million albums.

But Kram says that the band always maintained control of their operation. "The DIY aspect to our band is crucial. We've made 75 per cent of our own film clips, done all of our own artwork, wrote all of our own songs, we only have a crew of two, and we've had the same manager for 15 years. And everything (royalties etc) is split down the middle - it's not for every band, but that's why we're still here today."

The band had some success in the US, with Shazam! being featured on an episode of Sex and the City and on the trailer for the film Ice Age, and the cover of Leadbelly's Black Betty turning up on Miss Congeniality, Dukes of Hazzard, Without a Paddle and Ghost Rider. But the band weren't prepared to put in the hard yards to crack the US market.

"We're not the type of band that could tour for more than a month at a time. We get freaked out," says Kram. "So you trade in a short-term loss for a long-term gain, and we've managed to get a lot of success from strange quarters."

The best-of includes only four songs from the past four years (including new single On My Way and Black Betty), which suggests they reached their creative peak a few years back. Without the phenomenal success of their cover of Black Betty, the compilation may have been their record company's way of getting a few sales out of the band before offloading them. Kram agrees: "Our previous album, Wally Funk, hadn't done that well, and this was the last album on the label. If this album hadn't worked, we may have disappeared, so we really needed something to kickstart it."

"There was actually resistance from our label to release it," says Janet. "But we said, 'No way'."

Spiderbait's second coming has been an inspiration to other established Australian bands.

"A lot of bands have been so happy for us that it has done so well, because we've proved that it's not over for you. You can't be negative," says Kram.

"It's a really good time to be an Australian rock band. For us to be around so long is great, but to still be one of the top bands in the country is even better, because we feel like we are still relevant."

Spiderbait's Greatest Hits is out now through Universal. They play the Forum tomorrow with Neon and the Spazzys.