S-Tribe

 

ORIGINS: Hornsby, NSW

GENRE: Punk, Ska

YEARS ACTIVE: 1994-1999

 

MEMBERS:

• Campbell Troy - Bass
  
• Frederick Rodrigues - Guitar
• Kristan Kang - Drums (1994-1998)
• George - Drums (1998-1999)'
• Aaron - Bass (1994)
  

RELEASES: 

• Demo (1995) [as Skam]

• Self-Titled (1998) - Download Here.
• 1. Eastside
• 2. Newtown
• 3. Huntered
• 4. [Sample 1]
• 5. Pauline
• 6. Prosophobia
• 7. [Sample 2]
• 8. Lesser People
• 9. Sad World
• 10. Fuck
  

SUMMARY: Starting under the name 'Skam' (not to be confused with the later bands The Skam and S.K.A.M.), this Hornsby-based punk trio were heavily influenced by local band Lentil Soup. Sometime around 1996 they renamed themselves S-Tribe before eventually disbanding in 1999.

 

ORAL HISTORY:

FREDERICK: I just liked playing guitar - I moved house and schools a lot and like everyone was a bit of a social weirdo. Bands were a pretty neutral and portable way to connect with people that weren't (always) full of the machismo of sports and the other structures that were available to teenage boys to orient themselves around. My first taste was of course covering songs I liked with friends I didn't really like. I needed some extra cash as a teenager so started teaching guitar - Tristan Still, Daniel Lynch and Campbell Troy were all students and had changed schools and moved much less than me so this linked me to a more stable network that was discovering music, politics, drugs, social exclusion, and other ways to move through society without patriarchy, which was the major mechanism presented to teenage boys to progress to the next stage of life.

Frederick Rodrigues (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

CAMPBELL: I wanted to play guitar and I didn't want to go to formal lessons (absurd thinking) but my mum had a friend whose song could play so she hooked me up with him - a guy named Fred Rodrigues. We hit it off and after a couple of lessons it changed from 'lessons' to jamming. We went to different schools but Fred and I quickly became best mates and we'd hang often and jam after school. I started playing in a band with my mates at my school, covering Nirvana songs - we were called TrainSmash. We played a birthday party and I invited Fred. He watched us play and said we should do our own band and write our own songs. Skam was born. 

Campbell Troy (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

FREDERICK: Seeing a couple of early Hornsby PCYC gigs and particularly Lentil Soup - this was a massive influence. They were great gigs with high quality music and all of a sudden bands were not something that existed in some far off land of famous people and record deals. It was stuff we could do ourselves.

Frederick Rodrigues (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

CAMPBELL:We started going to PCYC shows and through Lentil Soup we met a guy named Kristan Kang. He became our drummer - a great damn drummer. It was initially a four piece (two guitars, bass, drums) but we had issues with bass players and Fred and I were jamming so much that it just made it easier for me to pick up the bass. We were quite into bands like Subhumans, Citizen Fish, Culture Shock, Gilgamesh. We were digging ska and trying to play it, hence we went with the name 'Skam', IE. Inspired by ska but played by amateurs.

Campbell Troy (Bass), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

KRISTAN: Matt from my previous band Gerry Gordon Trio introduced me to Fred Rodriguez, who in turn introduced me to Campbell Troy. We started jamming and writing stuff together and that turned into Skam. 

Kristan Kang (Drums), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

FREDERICK: Skam was the first iteration of S-Tribe. It was me and Campbell writing songs. Not sure when or why the name change happened - maybe when Kristan started with us. Or maybe when the original bass player, Aaron (he lived across the road from Ed Melville, the bass player in Lentil Soup and singer in Iron Sausage, who taught him bass) left. I think Aaron freaked about playing in front of people and got his mum to tell us he had a dentist appointment at the same time as our first gig at the PCYC... We still played the show. It went okay. I remember it was intimidating for a first show - it was at the Hornsby PCYC and the hall was pretty big. Our best show was a little later, at Jack's Island Cafe in Hornsby, which was a youth centre.

Frederick Rodrigues (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

Lyric sheet from Self-Titled CD

KRISTAN: We did a show at a tiny place next to Hornsby Station with Lentil Soup. Possibly the Fitz Cafe. It was a tiny place but a whole bunch of people showed up so it had a lot of energy. Lentil Soup played after us and as always blew everyone away. We also played at a McHappy Day in the carpark of Thornleigh Maccas once. We thought we were badass because we left 'McLibel' leaflets on all the cars after, haha. We were all school kids, really. We also played the Sydney Uni Battle of the Bands once but weren't allowed to compete in the subsequent round despite qualifying because the other guys were underage (which the organisers didn't realise until after the first round).

Kristan Kang (Drums), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

FREDERICK: We recorded a few times. Never really went anywhere. Me and Campbell were busy with Iron Sausage and Kristen studied medicine. We started up with another drummer, George. He was from the 'gong and was a mathematician who later moved overseas.

Frederick Rodrigues (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

KRISTAN: I think we decided that the name 'Skam' was very high school-y. A bit naff. So we retained the 's'... and I think I just suggested S-Tribe because it seemed a bit different. We all liked it. It was before the days of the letter-word naming convention like eCommerce and iPhones.

Kristan Kang (Drums), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

FREDERICK: The exchange of music we wrote and found and knew became a salve - a mechanism and structure to form the basis of a culturally-oriented social network. For many people that age, where we had seen social networks built on hierarchies of masculinity, these exchanges substituted for the concepts of friendship and conviviality that we didn't how to build or that we were even missing. The new networks became real - real structures for experimentation and expression and identity. Thankfully these were also often coded with political ideals that guided towards communities, acceptance, independence, anti-capitalism, and introduced a lot of us to global politics. For sure this is not universal - there were plenty of macho dudes that crossed over to this scene, and people saw it as a starting point for rock jock fame. But for many this was real and in my experience it genuinely is and worked. I left Australia for a long time and after returning recently I still bump into people from that time who stayed with their choices and politics and made genuinely interesting lives, and importantly it did make a strong social network.

Frederick Rodrigues (Guitar), Noise Levels correspondence, 2024

RELATED BANDS: Iron Sausage, Sports Utility Band, The Gerry Gordon Trio, TrainSmash

ADDITIONAL THANKS: Nate Geoffrey, for supplying visual material, and Aaron Clarke for the music. 

Insert from Self-Titled CD (1998)