Tripod.
 Tripod, the trio, comprising Scod, Yon and Steven "Gatesy" Gates, have been entertaining Australian audiences for over 10 years, and fresh from winning the 2005 ARIA for Best Comedy album, Tripod returns to the Adelaide Fringe to make audiences laugh at their silly songs and on stage antics. Gatesy was pretty much how I imagined him to be - funny, casual, and laid back, buoyed with the ARIA win and the imminent launch of their first DVD.
"Fucking stoked!" Gates exclaims when I ask him about the ARIA win. "We've been nominated a few times and the same people always crop, like Rodney Rude... I think he's taken one out," he says going off on a tangent, the first of many in an entertaining fashion. "It'd be an absolute atrocity if he hasn't taken one out, considering we all shared his tapes in the 80s as little kids... But I think it was our turn," he cackles. "The Umbilical Brothers had an awesome DVD; I reckon that should have won, but we won instead, which was good. We were really pleased with that record too; it was a departure for us - it was a studio album we did with a band."
I wondered if they had difficulties doing the studio album, considering they're known more for their spontaneity and live performances.
"With the recorded album, we took the best songs from the three seasons of the Skithouse show," he says. "When we recorded them originally, we did it ourselves in our bedroom. We got the best sound we possibly could with what little knowledge we had. "But some of the songs we liked and went into the studio with a proper band and producer and we did them properly. Because they were already done and people thought they were good or funny, and we had performed them live, we just thought let's make the music as good as we can."
At the mention of Skithouse, which while not consistently funny had some fantastic moments, I lamented to Gates about the lack of comedy on free-to-air television.
"It comes in waves, doesn't it?" Gates agrees. "Like everything, lifestyle shows, cooking shows and shit, I think it comes down to network TV really. They just try to follow each other, jump on each other's successes. Channel 7 has 'Deal Or No Deal' so Channel 9 has to do some fucking game thing... And that's what happened with the sketch show thing - they decided 'it's time, we need comedy and we need local content - sketch shows are the answer!' So everyone did them for a while, and it stopped, but it'll come back, I think," he adds, tentatively. "There's no live comedy show - we were brought up on the 'Big Gig', which was just ace TV, live stuff where it's not a concern if someone fucks up and things go wrong."
Just in time for the Fringe, Tripod has a DVD ready. "Every year since getting back from Edinburgh we've been doing these things called 'Pod August Nights', a bunch of gigs on Thursdays and Fridays in August. Last year we did it at the Northcote social club (in Melbourne) and we decided to make a DVD of it. We did it on one night, and now we have a record of actually what we do in a live situation... No one really understands (our live performance)- WE don't really understand - which was really good, trying to work out what we did and what was funny in the editing suite and put in on film."
As with all DVDs, there are some specials on there, but the most interesting seems to have been dumped due to fear of landing in hot water. "We went to this elaborate effort to do this animation using a Lego set and everyone was freaking out that Lego were going to sue us for using their image as a backdrop for drugs and sex. So we couldn't use it," he laments.
Something that did make it on to the DVD that Gates believes people will enjoy is footage of the lads in Scotland. "One of the biggest things for us," he says excitedly, "is there's footage of us in Edinburgh in 1998, this was two years after we started. We were pretty much under-prepared, certainly by today's standards anyway. But there's this amazing footage, shot after shot of three young, geeky guys trying to make their way in the world bouncing around in colourful outfits trying to make an impact on Edinburgh. I think it's the most embarrassing footage of us ever seen by man!" he laughs.
Julian Cram
 | Tripod perform 'Self Saucing' at the Royalty Theatre from Tues 7 March (and the DVD is out later this month) |
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