Dino Scatena sits down with members of Powderfinger, Silverchair and Spiderbait to discuss a decade of Australian music.

A decade ago, as the first issue of Australian Musician was being pulled together, the local music scene was going through a major generational shift. On the back of the international grunge movement, a whole swag of new acts from across Australia - bands that once would have been confined to the alternative scene and independent charts - were on the cusp of making a serious impression on the mainstream.

For this 10th anniversary issue, Australian Musician asks members of emerging bands from that era - Bernard Fanning and Darren Middleton from Powderfinger, Ben Gillies from Silverchair and Janet English from Spiderbait - on their recollections from the period and their thoughts about how things have changed.

Where were you as a band 10 years ago?

Darren Middleton: We were a bit lost.

Bernard Fanning: We were confused.

Darren: Confused is probably better, actually. We were easily influenced by what ever was going on at the time. Maybe moreso within the Brisbane music scene. There were bands out of Brisbane who just had a certain style and sound, and we all just wanted to sound the same. Or we all just ended up sounding the same. Which, in hindsight, obviously, wasn't true to what we like to do.

Bernard: Pangaea, Brasilia, Regurgitator, they were just getting cracking. And they had a real technical element to them. And that influenced us a lot about, I mean, we've all heard (1994's) Parables For Wooden Ears. (laughs) What a spectacular failure. I think it was pretty evident that the style we had on that first album wasn't very natural for us. It was quite forced. And that's one of the reasons the music wasn't very good. Ever since we started to trust ourselves and started to do what we felt was the right way to write, we've just got better and better as songwriters, without having to try to be like anybody else. Just try to do our own thing. I'm not trying to make out like we're the most original band of all time or anything, because we're not. Obviously we're not. We just found what we're good at.

Ben Gillies: I guess when I look back at it, I just think about how it was almost a magical time. It was like when you were a little kid –anything was possible, you're really excited and you just want to do it all at once. You just want to be the biggest band in the world. And at that stage, you're kind of going, ‘We could really get a shot.'It was an unpredictable and magical kind of time.

Janet English: It was definitely a more simple kind of existence. I was still handing in my dole form and on the weekends playing music with my friends. If we were lucky, we'd go up to Sydney for a weekend and play there. But there was a ground swell in Melbourne of all these punky bands coming to the fore. There was still a sense that it was an underground movement. You weren't really exposed on mainstream radio or television or even print. It was the Farnsey type-era that was still hanging on. And it was exciting because things like the Big Day Out and Triple J going national were starting to have an effect on small bands playing live music around Melbourne. But Melbourne was such a great place to develop as a band. It's a cliché but it was true –there were venues on every corner. A lot of that has changed over the last 10 years.

How do you look back on "paying your dues"?

Bernard: It sucks while you're doing it.

Darren: It's stacking all your guitar amps in the back (of a van) and putting a thin mattress on top of it and taking turns trying to sleep.

Bernard: Do bands even do that anymore?

Darren: I think it's all Taragos now.

Bernard: Being the perverse band that we are, we refused to have a Tarago until about 1997. We just thought they were puncey.

Janet: The first tour we ever did, we drove up to Sydney (from Melbourne) and the windscreen broke. So the 200 bucks that we made went on the windscreen, so we didn't make anything. But I remember you to go to the Lansdowne (Hotel in Sydney) and sleep on the floor in the rooms upstairs. But it was just exciting to be playing music and have people come along.

Ben: We didn't really pay our dues much in Australia –we had a pretty free ride. But I feel the really hardcore touring we did overseas is more where we paid our dues. Especially in Europe, because we kind of had a similar thing in America where "Tomorrow" took off and gave us a really good launching pad. In Europe, it was a little more of a slog. You know, playing to 200 people and having to go back to the same places again and again and build up a fan base. Eventually we were able to go back there and play some pretty big festivals and stuff. It was a harder slog in Europe but, compared to some bands, it probably wasn't hard at all.

When did you actually start seeing real money?

Bernard: We got off the dole at the end of 1996, after Double Allergic came out.

Darren: That was a big turning point - being able to support yourself with the job you love doing is great. Feeling a bit more independent, I guess.

Bernard: And being able to buy a guitar or something. That was good too. That's when I bought a four-track. And since then, we've just made so much money, it's unbelievable (laughs). You would not even be able to comprehend how rich we are.

Janet: For us, probably not until we had Ivy (and the Big Apples) come out (in 1996). We were clever in that we owned the recording for Spanish Galleon (1995's The Unfinished Spanish Galleon of Finley Lake). We shopped around and we got a deal –we got good advice,

I suppose - but we did a publishing and distribution deal with that record. So when Ivy happened, the flow on effect for the back-catalogue was great. So we probably made more money off that record even though it sold less.

Ben: I guess when we were 16, it was like, - Okay, bloody hell, we're getting some pretty good money now. We probably should look after it because this may not last forever.'Kind of thinking along the lines of a professional footballer or something -- you might have a limited career. You know, the money is great, but it's definitely not why you do it.

How much has equipment changed over the past decade?

Janet: The technology was still priced out of your range back then and you were still going into big studios and relying on them to pull your little cassette demos into some sort of form that could be presented to the world. But that's all changed in the last eight years or so. The technology is all available on a home computer. I remember when we got a little bit of cash flowing in, we thought it would be a really wise idea to set up someone's home as a studio, which involved a massive 24-channel desk, huge speakers, a big DAT player. Within a couple of years, it was obsolete, and it took up someone's lounge room. They were really pissed off with it anyway.

Bernard: The dumb thing about the music industry is that when you're completely broken arse, no one will give you any help. And then as soon as you start to sell some records, people will go "Here's a guitar". "Try this amp, you can have it for half price." It's the complete opposite of what needs to happen.

How different is your rehearsal room to what you had 10 years ago?

Darren: It's a bit bigger (laughs).

Bernard: We've had about five in that time. But we've always had one. In the early days we were in a building where all the other bands in Brisbane were. There was us and Pangea and Screamfeeder and Regurgitator. We went to Adelaide Street (in Brisbane) after that. We were actually right in the middle of the CBD in Brisbane, opposite City Hall, in this awesome building, except it had 32 stairs, so the loading was a nightmare. We'd all get the bus into town, go to practice, go up the stairs, go to the city council canteen across the road for lunch. It was fun as, actually. Now we have our own place which is fucking awesome. It's in between two mechanics so you can make as much noise as you like. It's like a studio, basically.

Ben: We actually started off in my parents'living room. I had my drums there. So it was between the living room and the garage. We started off pretty similar to where most bands start and then moved on to really smelly and dirty rehearsal rooms. Then we gradually moved up the chain to slightly less dirty and smelly rehearsal rooms.

Janet: Ours isn't that different, actually. We've been rehearsing at a place called Bakehouse. It's just that the areas you were rehearsing in 10 years ago –which were Collingwood and Fitzroy –were still a little bit scummy. Now they are completely gentrified. The rehearsal rooms are still there, they're holding on. But I guess eventually the rent will be too out of control for them or the temptation to sell will be too high and they'll move out to the 'burbs.

Can we have some thoughts on the major changes in the music industry in the past 10 years?

Bernard: I spoke to my nephews the other day, who are 14 and 16. And I said, "Do your mates have iPods?" Yes. "Okay, how many songs have they got on there?" About 1000. "Okay, did they upload them from CDs that they have bought?" None. My nephews are the only ones at their school that aren't allowed to download. That's the most significant change, for sure. I'm not getting all Lars Ulrich about it. It's not all that different from us with cassette tapes, taping (Kiss') Alive II off the record player.

Janet: I think inevitably –along with the Big Day Out and the possibility of touring, having a career out of something that people used to do at the Tote (Hotel in Melbourne) on a weekend –there came a degree of professionalism. With that came people who knew how to manage money and how to manage bands, push them in different directions. I'm not sure if that's good or not but it definitely changed the whole industry.

Ben: The Australian music industry has always seemed really healthy to me. Obviously the scene is constantly changing, there are hills and valleys, but I definitely think it's a hill at the moment, with people like Jet and Kasey Chambers. There's so much new music around at the moment. Everyone seems excited by music. But on a whole, I don't think the Australian music industry has ever been on a downer. It's always been pretty ripe with lots of new things happening.