FOR THOSE ABOUT TO ROCK
Watcher column for the Canberra Times Tuesday 21 November 2006, filed early.


A big moshy round of applause for SBS for bringing RocKwiz back in a fourth series starting...wait...we have to wait until February next year? Thankfully RocKwiz is in repeats, on Saturday nights at 9.15, until then.

Just as there are many inexplicable ingredients in the preceding show, Iron Chef, RocKwiz tends to combine enigmatic elements for an unpredictable outcome. One person's fresh can be another's shambles, but the spectacular moments are truly great. While the music quiz Spicks and Specks on the ABC thrives on all-ages party-game fun, Rock Wiz has the street cred, the mood lighting and a mix of total dagginess, raw sex appeal, instrument malfunctions, and transcendent brilliance.

Part of RocKwiz's authenticity comes from the venue, the famously sticky-underfoot Gershwin Room, a tacky-glam rock cave under the Esplanade Hotel in Melbourne's St Kilda, oft-snatched from the developers' maw. You feel like you're at a gig because you are. The RocKwiz "orchestra", are a posse of old, sure hands any real star would be happy to have backing them. The sole irritating thing about RocKwiz is its ludicrous spelling.

Hostessery skills akimbo, Julie Zemiro, steeled by a history in improv-comedy and, no doubt, years of women interrogating her about where she got that precise shade of red lippy, brings amplified sassiness. She wheels between schoolmarm and skittish, wrangling the odd unintelligible, overly-libationous celebrity visitor and some suddenly star-struck or camera-shy contestants.

To make up the quiz teams, rock-trivia buffs are winnowed from the room's audience by the show's co-creator and adjudicator Brian Nankervis, and each team is then joined by a music identity. At the end of the show the two guests sing a duet. So far this has successfully mixed people of different genres and age groups without getting creepy in that way of Hollywood older man-young woman pairing.

We've had an unintentional who's-the-coolest-contest between Lisa Miller and Robert Forster (The Go Betweens) doing Blondie's 'Picture This', and the take-no prisoners combo of Deborah Conway and Tex Perkins (The Cruel Sea) singing 'Love Hurts'. For Bryan Ferry's 'Let's Stick Together', Rockwiz served up the surprising mix of sweet-voiced Angie Hart (Frente) with Dave Graney, who saves himself from first-glance foppishness by sheer force of intellect, wit, and musical inventiveness - a great deal more than one can say about the latter years of Bryan Ferry himself.

Watching the RocKwiz duets all in a row (there's a DVD with commentaries and a CD available, called Two For the Show, RocKwiz Duets - series 1 and 2) it's interesting to notice who often looks at the other singer to make a connection, and who tends not to bother. Dan Kelly wasn't silly enough to take his eyes off Martha Wainright much.

People are still talking about Wainright and Kelly's duet, both fully clothed, and both playing guitar on 'Slave to Love', it was far sexier, in its romantic way, than any of that artificial, paid-to-writhe MTV piffle that people like Nelly Furtado have lowered themselves to in recent years.

In a business where women performers barely get a look in, and when they do they're made to look like strippers, RocKwiz makes sure there's a talented woman being herself, a singer/songwriter/musician front and centre each week, introducing them to an audience that might otherwise have to settle for Britney. RocKwiz has introduced many people, to Mia Dyson, Clare Bowditch, Sophie Koh, and Nessa Morgan.

The current repeats allow punters to catch up on bittersweet highlights such as Paul Hester's last performance, and Chrissie Amphlett's mortifying ageing Monica Lewinsky mime performance - well, I guess it's only fair to point out that Miss Amphlett, bless her, didn't bother to be mortified and barreled on to duet like a prowling, well, cat, on Stray Cat Blues with Chris Cheney from the Living End. The finale to the third series was euphoric, with Deborah Conway, Rebecca Barnard and Killing Heidi's Ella Hooper, singing a giga-girly "Our Lips Are Sealed" and Tex Perkins, Dallas Crane's Dave Larkin, and You Am I's Tim Rogers growling out Thin Lizzy's "The Boys Are Back In Town".

The good will and "have a go" ethos continues during the current filming. Chris Ballew from the Presidents of the United States of America arrived all prepared to sing his own song 'Candy', then found out he'd be singing Iggy Pop's 'Candy' with Chelsea Wheatley, from a young power pop-punk trio, The Gingers. He popped upstairs with an i-Pod, and four hours later they belted out a winner you can see in February. Any other guests we can anticipate for Series 4? "We tried to get Bono," says Brian Nankervis. "People laughed at us." I reckon it's Bono's loss.

Regular Spicks and Specks programming finished last week, but tomorrow (ABC Wednesday 8.30) there'll be a highlights package of favourite moments, including the Kransky Sister's cabaret version of AC/DC's Highway to Hell with a tuba solo, which bears little similarity to RocKwiz's version with Sarah McLeod (Superjesus) and Angry Anderson. The Christmas special, A Very Specky Christmas, will be shown in a few weeks' time. Because it's going to be CHRISTMAS. In a few WEEKS.