ROCKWIZ LIVE

RocKwiz is up there in the vault as one of my all-time favourite shows.

It is a perfect set-up, originally filmed in The Gershwin Room at The Epsy Hotel in St Kilda, Melbourne. The Espy is a grand old hotel, and mecca for lovers of music, specifically rock. You can almost feel the sticky of the floor, the ringing of your ears when you watch the show. You swoon over the red velvet, the atmosphere is palpable and very much your usual pub experience.

4 regular people/punters from the pub are chosen to sit on panels of 3 on the main stage to answer all sorts of questions about music. It is next level pub trivia!

There is a wonderful backing band, initially the 3 piece of Mark Ferry on Bass, Peter 'Lucky" Luscombe on Drums, and the genius James Black on keyboards and guitars, often together! They were phenomenal in terms of replicating the sound of well-known and beloved songs and new music too. 

The 2 big keys to the show's success are Julia Zemiro and Brian Nankervis. Julia is your hostess with the mostess. She keeps everything running smoothly, with grace and much humour. Always dressed in black and white with sometimes a touch of red, Julia fits in visually as a rock n roll chick. She is effortlessly cool, hilarious, quick witted, and utterly charming. Brian is a force of nature, he moderates the show, keeps time, does the warm-up, and helps with the selection of the audience.

The show starts with Who Can It Be Now, where Julia asks questions about a performer that is waiting backstage to sing a song. This is always a mix of prominent and well-known Australian singers and musicians, up and coming singers and musicians, and often visiting singers and musicians from overseas. This is always fun and exciting. Once they have sung their song, they join one panel, and the next Who Can It Be Now is up. So each panel has a real life musician sitting with them, answering questions. This is always fabulous, seeing the reactions of everyday punters when Martha Wainwright or Tex Perkins joins their panel!

The rounds of questions come next including the Million Dollar Riff, where the band plays a classic riff, that you need to guess. This is my area of expertise! Bloody love that round.

Throughout the show, Dugald, the roadie, comes out in his white singlet and grin, and shows us how each panel of contestants are going with pieces of cardboard and scores.

At the end of the show a winning panel is announced, there is no prize, just the glory of winning. The two singers join forces with the band and sing a duet. This is often the highlight with some amazing pairings and songs.

Here is a link to one of my favourite duets of all time from the show, Deborah Conway and Tex Perkins slaying the Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris version of Love Hurts. It smoldered so much, I got a text message from my Mum (My parents were huge fans of the show) asking how long they were married, lol!

The show was instantly a classic and a favourite, especially for those answering at home. Back in the hey day of twitter, a group of locals would watch RocKwiz and tweet, we became friendly online and ended up all meeting for a local 80s gig - despite never meeting before - and had a great night, most of them are still close friends to this day.

This show means so much to me.

It finished up some years back, sadly, but has had a reprieve this year, in a slightly shorter format. It is pretty good, not quite the same, but better than no RocKwiz!

And over the past decade or so it has toured. The touring show is pretty much the same at the television show except you often get more than 2 singers or musicians AND you get to see how they find the 4 panelists for the main show.

This show was a superb one, I have seen the live show a couple of times before, Andrew had not. We'd had a big week and were both really exhausted. And it was in the middle of the Newcastle Writers Festival weekend. However, once we got to The Civic Theatre the vibe was so warm and uplifting we felt immediately great.

Brian was outside in the foyer, bouncing about and getting everyone excited. We took our seats and he came into the theatre and was telling stories music and his childhood and so on. He had a soundtrack playing and then it happened.

He told a story about a childhood favourite song and played it.

The song was Snoopy Vs the Red Baron by The Royal Guardsman!

It was a childhood favourite of mine, we played it A LOT!

It was on a compilation called Goofy Greats, that Dad had brought us, with loads of cool bubblegum and groovy pop from the 60s and 70s.

I cannot begin to tell you the joy this song brought to me, hearing it again for the first time in many decades. It was a song I had forgotten even existed. But it took me right back to dancing around the lounge room with my sister when we were little. We loved that song. I remembered every word and nuance of the song, it was a glorious moment.

When I got home later that night I found Goofy Greats and the original 45, both part of Dad's vinyl collection he gifted to me some years back.

I also found the original video, which I had never seen, and it is great. The song itself is very catchy of course, but quite subversive if you listen to it, it is about WW2.

So after that, we couldn't not have a great night!

There were special cards placed around the theatre under seats, which gave a lot of people a chance on stage to answer questions and possibly be chosen as the final group of 4 for the main part. This was loads of fun and Brian did a superb job of running through this.

Once the contestants were chosen, Julia appeared. She is so very charismatic and just one of the best people. I am sure we would be great friends, if we got to know each other, lol! So much in common.

The first 2 guests were revealed, Wilsn and Chris Cheney.

The show went on and a third, Thando was revealed.

Julia had to have a wry chat to the audience about calling out the answers, as everyone was doing, lol. The contestants were to do this and we needed to answer internally and silently lol.

The night was full of music and comedy and laughter and joy. If you have never been to a live RocKwiz, I cannot recommend it enough.

I went home singing Snoopy Vs the Red Baron and it kept me smiling for weeks after.

Some nights are 11 out of 10!

(see what I did there!!)