The countdown is on for the ninth edition of RocKwiz’s Really Really Good Friday.
The annual Rockwiz event, which combines a music quiz, live music, stand-up comedy and plenty of crowd participation, returns to Hamer Hall on Friday, April 18.
The Good Friday extravaganza follows RocKwiz’s biggest Australian tour to date – titled Never Mind the Buzzers, Here’s RocKwiz LIVE! – which included three dozen shows across metro and regional Australia in spring 2024.
The RocKwiz Really Really Good Friday
- Hamer Hall
- April 18
- Tickets are on sale now
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
This year also marks the 20th anniversary of RockWiz’s debut on SBS television. The original trio of host and quizmaster Julia Zemiro, scorer and adjudicator Brian Nankervis and human scoreboard Dugald McAndrew are still at the helm. Nankervis is as surprised as anyone at RocKwiz’s staying power.
“Who knew when we started Really Really Good Friday that it would become a regular thing?” he says.
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RockWiz aired on SBS for 14 seasons before the network pulled the plug in 2019. Since that time, barring a quick, one-off season on Foxtel in 2023, they’ve prioritised live shows.
“The live shows are great, we love them,” Nankervis says. “We tend to take a few more risks than when we’re filming.”
The Never Mind the Buzzers tour travelled all over the continent, visiting far-flung places like Rockhampton in Queensland, Orange in New South Wales, Albury in Victoria and Renmark in South Australia.
The hosts were joined onstage throughout the tour by the RocKwiz Orkestra, featuring guitarist Ashley Naylor, drummer Peter Luscombe, keyboardist Clio Renner, bass player Bill McDonald, and guitarist and vocalist Olympia.
It was an intense period of living and travelling together, but Nankervis says they’re hungry for more. “We all agreed that it was probably the best tour we’d done. It was pretty much a sell-out. I got an email from Julia the other day and she said, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m really missing our tour.’”
The tour wrapped up with a gig at St Kilda’s Palais Theatre in late November. Nankervis promises it’ll be a whole new show on Good Friday. “There’s new acts, there’s new questions,” he says.
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They can’t reveal the names of the special guests ahead of time – surprise is integral to the RocKwiz format – but Nankervis offers a few teasers.
“There’s one that’s really quite unexpected, which we’re very excited about,” he says. “It’s not the traditional RocKwiz artist, but nonetheless it is an artist who we all love. We’ve worked with this particular person once and it was really great.”
There will be three other “really fabulous” musical guests, says Nankervis, including one who’s “an absolute superstar at the moment.” Plus, it wouldn’t be one of RocKwiz’s Really Really Good Fridays without a couple of comedians on stage.
“That’s been really good for us to change things up,” Nankervis says of the addition of stand-up comedy, “and it always fits in with the comedy festival.”
The format of RocKwiz live closely mirrors that of the TV show. Two teams compete in a music quiz; of the three people on each team, two are selected from the audience and one is a well-known musician. But the live show is generally more bombastic than the TV show.
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“It’s bigger and it’s louder and it’s looser and it’s a bit unpredictable,” Nankervis says. “That’s partly because of the way we do it, where we have contestants from the audience and there’s no way you can predict how they’re going to behave.”
He adds, “I always say to the artists, ‘Just realise you’re going to be sitting next to a couple of people who are very, very excited because they’re finally on their favourite show. They may not behave because they’ll get so carried away.’”
Most of the show’s well-known segments, such as Who Can It Be Now?, Million Dollar Riff, and the Furious Five, will feature in the Good Friday show. But there’ll be more guests and more music.
“There’s a couple of showpieces,” says Nankervis. “We use a horn section. We try and get a little bit more theatrical with it.”
As for the meaning behind the show’s emphatic title, Nankervis says it’s simple. “Why have a good Friday when you could have a really good Friday? And then why have a really good Friday when you could have a really really good Friday?”
To get your tickets to the Rockwiz’s Really Really Good Friday, head here.
