Kram also acknowledges the irony of the track’s win, given it took the piss out of the major labels’ frenetic bidding war to ink a deal with Spiderbait. “That song was kind of like a comic book version of how bad it can actually be, and the song still resonates with people today,” he says. “But the label loved [the song], even though it was about them and everyone else – they had enough of a sense of humour to get it. And it wasn’t just about them – it was about the whole concept of record labels.”
A few years before – having released the Circle K single, P’tang Yang Kipper Bang Uh! EP and Shashavaglava album on the independent Au Go Go records – Spiderbait found themselves swept up in the major label feeding frenzy that had commenced with the formation of Rooart in the late-1980s, and was propelled forward by the success of Nirvana’s Nevermind in 1991.
Spiderbait – Kram, bass player and co-singer Janet English and guitarist Damien Whitty – grew up in the New South Wales country town of Finley, before moving to Melbourne in the late 1980s. Kram moved down to study music at Melbourne University, and he was immediately fascinated with the depth and breadth of independent music on offer in Melbourne.
“I remember the first time I ever heard Triple R, and it just blew me out – all this music I’d never heard before, announcers that I never heard speak like that before, with great knowledge but without the big razzle-dazzle commerciality of commercial radio and TV, which is all we really had,” he says. “I think we just got an explosion of stimulation. I was studying music at Melbourne and playing a lot of jazz, and I was listening to bands like Black Flag and Dead Kennedys and found it really energising. And I really loved the politics of the culture, the equality of it.”
Things came to a head for Spiderbait across the road from St Kilda’s Prince of Wales Hotel midway through a Dinosaur Jr concert. “We fell in love with J Mascis straight away. We loved Dinosaur Jr, and to see them live – the energy of the music was so exciting to play. You love great songs, but it’s how you gravitate to the energy in the art that you love,” Kram says.
Taking a nature break across the road due to the impenetrably long lines at the Prince, Kram, Whitty and English decided to form a band. “I think we had our first rehearsal up at Janet’s farm in a giant shed where her dad kept his tractors. We set up there one day when the tractor wasn’t there, and we recorded the rehearsal. Basically all we played was Dinosaur Jr and Cosmic Psychos songs. That was all we knew,” Kram laughs.
Spiderbait took their cues from a variety of places; Kram had an interest in jazz and had also jammed with Whitty in a rock’n’roll vein while the pair was still in Finley; English was blessed with a lilting pop voice, but embraced punk rock with an equally passionate fervour. Like the Hard Ons, Spiderbait walked a sharp line between pop and metal.
“We had instances over the years where people couldn’t understand how you could have a pop singer and a metal band in the same band, and the songs are so varied and you don’t know which songs to push,” Kram says.
Not long after that fateful Dinosaur Jr gig, Wally Kempton, the Meanies’ bassist and manager who also booked The Tote Hotel in Collingwood, offered Spiderbait their first gig. “I remember we were pretty crap that night, but people loved us,” Kram laughs. “I was too nervous to notice. Back in those days I’d just put my head down and play – I was too frightened to look at the audience.”
Spiderbait quickly came to the attention of Milne and Moon, and signed to Au Go Go. Despite their burgeoning success on the Melbourne independent scene, strained personal and emotional relationships made it seem as if Spiderbait would fold, before regrouping to record Shashavaglava.
“We’ve almost broken up plenty of times,” Kram laughs. “Bands usually break up for three reasons: one is the relationships within the band, two is money, and three is if they’re going nowhere. I think we had all three of those things over the years, and worked them out and we’re still here. We kind of have an equality, to be equal, even though we’re different personalities.”
Kram believes the three-person composition of the band has helped with their longevity – that, and a robust sense of humour. “We are very much three duos. Myself and Whitt are very much a jamming phenomenon. We did a session for the last record when we literally jammed for 10-15 minutes, and we went back and looked at it and just chopped up parts, and that’s what we used to do in the early days. Myself and Janet are a songwriting team, and she’s more focused on the songwriting craft and less on her instrument. And Janet’s such a great singer, and she’s always thinking about the song. And her and Whitt, they just crack each other up – a real comedy team.”
While Spiderbait watched contemporaries such as Killing Time, The Hummingbirds, Tumbleweed and Ratcat come off second best after dealing with a major label, Kram says the relationship with Universal (originally Polydor) has been overwhelmingly beneficial to the group. “It allowed us to have a career, we made a lot more money, and it gave us the freedom to create the way we wanted to.”
Kram singles out a Big Day Out show in the mid-’90s as a quantum leap for the band. Playing Old Man Sam for the first time in front of a big audience, the trio was amazed and flattered by the response. “We went on the stage and we still felt like a pub band and something changed that show, and it was pretty much condensed in that song – the reaction to that song was so huge and epic. It was like stadium rock, and we really rose to the occasion. We weren’t freaked out by it, and when we came off the stage we were a different band. I think we got a huge injection of confidence in our ability to play to a massive crowd.”
With live appearances impeded by domestic responsibilities and new recording hampered by logistics and a laissez-faire attitude, there was a nine-year gap between Spiderbait’s sixth LP, Tonight Alright, and its 2013 follow-up, Spiderbait. “We’d just been putting it off for so long – we were always going to do another record, but it takes us forever to get around to doing things with regards to our own lives. We’ve never been very focused on the future. We’re into doing what we’re doing at the time. But when everyone agreed to do it, and particularly when we got Frank [producer François Tétaz], that’s when it came together.”
As they prepare to hit the road to celebrate their silver jubilee, Kram says Spiderbait are largely the same as they were 25 years ago. “We’re happy – we’re like this iconic band that seems to have made it, had its chapter in the annals of Australian rock history, which to us is a complete surprise, and something we’re proud of, and we’re proud of each other. But we’re proud that we’re really the same band that we were at that first gig at The Tote. We really haven’t changed and the dynamic hasn’t really changed. We may not play again one day, but I don’t know if we’ll make a big song and dance about it. If we had a farewell tour, we might have so much fun that we’d decide to keep going. ”
BY PATRICK EMERY
