Thirty years after Spiderbait turned an unlikely blend of punk, pop, grunge and experimental rock into their biggest album, Ivy And The Big Apples remains defined by the song that changed Australian radio history.
Spiderbait’s Ivy And The Big Apples turns 30 this month, marking three decades since the Finley, New South Wales trio released the album that transformed them from an alternative rock band into one of Australia’s most unlikely hit acts. At its centre was “Buy Me A Pony”, a 1:44 blast that became the first song by an Australian artist to top the Triple J Hottest 100.
Released on 14 October 1996, Ivy And The Big Apples was Spiderbait’s third studio album and the record that changed the scale of the band’s career. It eventually sold close to 250,000 copies in Australia, was certified double platinum and earned Spiderbait their first ARIA Award, winning Best Alternative Release in 1997.
The album itself reached number three on the Australian albums chart, while “Calypso” became one of the group’s biggest commercial singles, reaching number 13. Yet the record’s most significant moment came from a song that was barely long enough to qualify as a conventional rock single.
“Buy Me A Pony” was Spiderbait’s response to the music business, inspired partly by the bidding war surrounding the band. Kram has described the song as a comic-book version of how quickly a record label can go from enthusiasm to indifference.
The joke was not lost on the label. “The label loved it, even though it was about them and everyone else,” Kram said in 2016, noting that the people involved had enough of a sense of humour to understand what the band was doing.
When “Buy Me A Pony” was voted number one in the 1996 Triple J Hottest 100, it became the first Australian song to claim the top position. More than 300,000 votes were recorded for that year’s countdown, making the result an important moment for Australian alternative music.
The achievement was particularly unexpected because Spiderbait did not fit neatly into one musical category. Janet English and Kram shared vocal duties, while the band’s music could move between punk, grunge, hard rock, pop and more experimental territory.
“We were a pretty unlikely hit band,” English later said. She also pointed to the band’s unusual combination of “two singers and this genre spread where people couldn’t quite pin down what we were doing.”
That unpredictability is built into Ivy And The Big Apples. Recording was split between Studios 301 in Sydney and Rockinghorse Studios near Byron Bay, with Phil McKellar and Paul McKercher taking different approaches to the sessions.
The Sydney recordings benefited from the presence of Studios 301’s Neve desk and vintage microphones, producing a fuller and clearer sound. Janet’s vocal on “Goin’ Off”, for example, was recorded with an old German AKG microphone dating from the 1950s. The Rockinghorse sessions were deliberately rougher, giving songs including “Don’t Kill Nipper” and “Conjunctivitis” a more abrasive character.
The band also recorded the album while beginning to look beyond Australia. Between the sessions they undertook their first overseas tour, travelling through Canada and the United States.
There was another unusual story behind the album title. Ivy was the name of a woman from Finley, New South Wales, who sold large apples. That local detail became the title of a record that would ultimately take Spiderbait much further from home.
“Calypso”, released as the album’s third single in 1997, added another chapter to the story. It reached number 13 in Australia and later appeared in the 1999 film 10 Things I Hate About You, although it was not included on the movie’s soundtrack.
The album’s long afterlife has included multiple vinyl editions. It was first issued on vinyl in 2016 for the album’s 20th anniversary, followed by a red vinyl reissue in 2021 for its 25th anniversary.
Thirty years on, the record’s importance is not simply that Spiderbait made their biggest-selling album in 1996. Ivy And The Big Apples captured a moment when an unconventional Australian band could make an unlikely song the biggest song on Triple J, while still retaining the rough edges and musical unpredictability that made the group difficult to categorise in the first place.
The album remains a snapshot of Spiderbait at the point where the alternative scene and mainstream Australian music collided, with “Buy Me A Pony” sitting at the centre of that unlikely intersection.
Ivy And The Big Apples Tracklisting
“Chest Hair”
“Hot Water & Milk”
“Buy Me A Pony”
“When Fusion Ruled The Earth”
“Calypso”
“Goin’ Off”
“Don’t Kill Nipper”
“Horschack Army”
“Conjunctivitis”
“Joyce’s Hut”
“Jasper”
“Goosh”
“Should Have Done What My Mum Always Told Me To”
“Hey”
“Hawaiian Nights”
“Driving Up The Ceiling”
“Driving Up The Ceiling” is followed by one minute of silence before two hidden tracks, “Big Furry Green Monster” and “Sprinkler”, complete the original recording.
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