Review your plans, RocKwiz is coming to Geelong

Put your trivia hats on, freshen up your rock music knowledge, and practice your go-to karaoke jam- our old friends Brian, Julia, Dugald and the rest of the RocKwiz crew are going live at Costa Hall on Saturday 24 November.
Speaking to Brian Nankervis, we got the lowdown on everything you need to know, but before we begin the age old RocKwiz question must be answered.
TW: What was your first concert and first album?
“First international band I saw was the Kinks at Festival Hall. They came out and said ‘the government just banned our latest single so we’re going to play it twice’ and that single was Lola and I now have a daughter named Lola so it all links in.” Nankervis laughs, “and the first record I bought, I joined Australian Record Club and got Best of the Who, Highway 61 by Bob Dylan and the soundtrack to The Graduate.”
Don’t worry if your answer isn’t as cool! Apparently you’ll get a roar from the crowd if your first album was …Baby One More Time from Britney Spears (say what you will, it’s iconic!). But that first album, like the rest of the variety entertainment television show turned stage show, is a nostalgia trip.
“Because you’re working with music and you’re working with something that people love, this idea of the first record or the first concert can be very powerful,” says Nankervis. “People remember their first concert because in some ways it may have changed their life or it might have had this huge effect on them and they remember it as a moment of pure joy and happiness and so it’s pretty powerful.”
It’s even more than that. From travelling through different eras of music to reliving experiences and seeing your favourite artists live, the whole RocKwiz Revue show intentionally hits the nostalgia chord. Particularly as they take you into the television screen, recreating the set that was watched religiously on a Saturday evening (except for that year that it was on a Monday) that has been part of family homes for 14 years.
“I think that’s what people really love because they walk into the theatre and I actually sometimes watch them and I watch their faces and you can see they’re shocked because they go ‘oh my god, I’m in the TV show’. You know, it’s quite a surreal experience because they feel like they’ve walked into the set because we have the same desks, the same curtains, the same backdrop, the same RocKwiz sign, the chandelier, all those things that have been part of the TV show for the last 14 years are suddenly right there in front of them and they’re sort of in it,” Nankervis says.
And you can literally be in the show as a contestant. If you’ve played along at home for years and think you have what it takes you could be one of the lucky four that go onto the live show out of a 24 person shortlist.
“I go out into the foyer before the show and if anyone is really desperate to have a go, they simple come up to me, find me in the theatre and I have a couple of questions I run past them and they have to prove their status as a rock brain.”
Age has no bounds either. The family fun quiz show has something for everyone, with questions coming out of every decade, karaoke for the inner rockstar and a lot of laughs.
“We have questions from all eras- there’s as many questions for the 90’s and 2000’s as there are from the 60’s, so everyone has the possibility of answering something,” Nankervis reiterates. As the name suggests though, ‘there will be a bit of a look back on 2018, paying tribute to some of the artists that left us for example Aretha Franklin and we will have a little sort of current affairs section, so it won’t be strictly music. We’re broadening out a little bit!”

Over the two hour show audiences can expect the same television format with more household name, and emerging, artist guests, live performances and it will be ‘longer, and louder and bigger and bolder’, than anything you’ve experienced on the screen.
“I think everyone realised that the music industry won’t survive and won’t flourish without new artists so it would be really easy to have the oldies that everyone knows but we always make a point of having artists that haven’t even had a record or have had one record out. And I think audiences get a real kick out of being in early on an act.”
After six national tours the RocKwiz show is now a ‘well-oiled machine’ but the live show leaves a lot of room for improvisation, mistakes and a hell of a lot more fun!
“Someone described it as backyard cricket on boxing day. You know, everyone gets a bat, everyone gets a bowl, you know grandpa gets to bowl a googly, grandma gets a bowl- everyone gets involved.”
In that case, bleach your whites and shine your ball and grab your ticket.
Bonus Trivia to get you ready:
Which Geelong icon was this week inducted into The Age Music Victoria Awards Hall of Fame?
ROCKWIZ Revue 2018 goes down at Costa Hall (at Deakin University) in Geelong on Saturday November 24. Tickets can be purchased via www.gpac.org.au/event/1074/rockwiz-revue-2018

You can also check out all the dates at rockwizlive.com.au
Written by Tammy Walters