I Spit on your Gravy formed in late 1983 after Fred Negro left The Editions. He met Scotty Stix and Pig at a party in Victoria Street, St Kilda. Scotty and Pig said they loved watching Fred play drums in The Editions and that they were jamming with another drummer - They wanted to call themselves Community Worry or Annoy the Neighbours. They asked Fred to come and beat up the current drummer, who played in a cabaret band called The Rickety Rainbow Band, and join the band as the drummer. Refusing to beat up the drummer, Fred suggested that instead they ask him to leave, which he did, and the trio rehearsed for a while and renamed themselves I spit on your Gravy after the horror film ‘I Spit on your Grave’.  Their fist gig was at The Venue in St Kilda with The Johnnys as part of Paul Elliott's ‘Gong Show’, while their second gig was at the Prince of Wales Hotel, 'Regal Room' as a one-off gig with pub rock band Painters and Dockers in 1984.

The Gravies, as they were commonly called, were an all-male band with back-up vocals and dancing by the gorgeous ‘Spitettes’ (Sam and Viv, and Di and Sindy). Kym the Crazy fire-breathing Clown was another highlight of the band. Fred's antics, aka the ‘chicken rooting’, started as a ‘Gong Show’ act called ‘Little Wriggly Bits’ - a pre-scripted one man silent play and a twisted comedy act with ‘The Butcher of Brighton’ reading the narration as if it was a letter written to a sex magazine - all based around a chicken, which Fred ends up having sex with at the end. At the suggestion of Ballroom publican Graeme Richmond, and in order to satisfy the vegetarians in the audience, sometimes Fred would have sex with a watermelon or cantaloupe. This also got quite messy with Fred throwing the remaining food into the audience once he had finished.

Throughout 1984 the band was banned from several venues for starting food fights and performing sexual savagery on stage. But, despite that, many other offers rolled in. 1984 was a big year for the band with the New Musical Express (NME) reporting that I Spit on Your Gravy from Australia are the group to watch: "Here at last is a band that combines sick humour with musical enjoyment and isn't scared to take it over the top and beyond.” 

Nigel Rennard of Missing Link Records assisted the band in putting out an EP titled St Kilda's Alright. It came out on the 'Man Made Records' label, along with other underground bands, No Nonsense, Corpse Grinders and Sacred Cowboys. Over 200 people turned up to a photo session for the EP cover that was shot on the steps of the Espy.

St Kilda's Alright was finally released, but there was a delay in getting the EP pressed by Festival Records due to the censoring of an added track titled 'Suck this Fred Nile'.  The EP also came with an illustrated songbook called 'Think for Yourself' which included the ‘Thursday Crawl’ bored game and an anarchist dot to dot. The Vice Squad ended up seizing all of the records from the record shops along with the songbooks. A court case was thus created with the charge being obscenity. The judge listened to the EP on a stolen record player to hear if it was in fact obscene and he said “It's not obscene it's crap!” and threw it out of court. But the police never gave the records back and consequently the record never got sold.

Paul Elliott came to the band’s rescue and re-released the EP on Polyester Records, including the censored track and the songbook, but this time with a red cover (the original cover was white). Many copies were sold and the band's popularity grew tenfold - they were suddenly the Kings and Queen's of St Kilda. Greville Records also include 2 tracks on the Eat Your Head Compilation produced by Phil MacDougall from Reactor Records. 

17 & 19 Acland Street, St Kilda was now known as the ‘House of the Gravy Sun’ with all of the band members living next door to each other.

A send-up horror film called Done to Death, featuring everyone in St Kilda all dying horribly, was even filmed there. The dwellings became a tad out of control or ‘party central’ - the Gravy’s would rehearse in the lounge room with the window open and people would come over and climb in the front window with a slab of beer and before you a knew it a party was happening.

In 1986 the band played a gig at The Ballroom with Fred deciding to have the ‘small penis competition’ – “littlest dick in the ballroom, win big prizes”. Members of the audience got up on stage and dropped their pants while Fred went around with his ruler measuring the size of each penis. Just at that moment members of the Liquor License commission walked into the venue on a 'random check' and closed the place down (there was also lots of underage drinking, drug selling and overcrowding taking place). After that the band was forced to change their name to everything from: Ian Rilen's Toilet, The Thursday Crawlers, Here Come the Leather Nuns (one with a bucket of chips for me), Stay Neat, I Am Your Head, and Everything You Know Is Wrong.

In 1987 a guy named Leo Martino got the band a record deal through Virgin Records and they went to Richmond Recorders to record an album while Lobby Loyde was at the helm. However the album didn't come out the way they had hoped so they re-corded it and brought it out as Froot Loop City. The band then went on a tour of Australia which went well. Also in 1987 I Spit on your Gravy made a single called ‘Piranha / Man’s not a Camel’ before the album, as part of the Virgin deal. They made a film clip for it at the Central Club Hotel in Richmond which got played on RAGE a fair bit, but prominent DJ at the time Karl Van Est from Eon FM said that “it will never get played on commercial radio because it mentions the Esplanade Hotel and St Kilda”.

After the Australian tour Leo Martino disappeared from the face of the earth with all the money the band made off the gigs. Not being able to pay for anything, the Gravies had a 'last ever gig' gig so that they could pay off their debts.  That gig went so well that the Prince of Wales hotel offered them the big room upstairs to ‘do it properly’. They made enough to pay their bills and subsequently did 37 last gigs. By that time the Vice Squad had become bored with harassing the band, and by the end of 1987, after the 37 last gigs the band finally separated. 

Australian musicologist, Ian McFarlane, described their early performances as "shambolic, drunken affairs, replete with on-stage brawls and members barely able to stand upright, let alone play their instruments" Negro was often "dropping his pants in public" and would deliver "other on-stage obscenities."

I Spit On Your Gravy line-up included: Fred Negro (vocals, drums), Jason 'Pig' Banner (guitar), Mark 'Sausage Fingers' Carson (bass, vocals), Phil 'Grizzly' Miles (guitar), Robbie Watts (guitar), Scotty 'Stix' Simpson (drums, vocals), Di Jones (vocals), Sindy Virtue (vocals).