In case you haven't caught up with it, there is news to tell on the RocKwiz Live front...
Tickets are now on sale for a Vanda and Young show at Perth Zoo on March 22nd and we will also be returning to Bluesfest in 2014.
In other news, tickets have been allocated for the first 4 recordings of the new series and we're really looking forward to getting back into the Espy.
Tickets are still on sale for the Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide Vanda and Young shows. Rehearsals began today and the line up of talent we have assembles for these shows is amazing! If you haven't got a ticket.... get some while they last!
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
RocKwiz Audience Feedback Survey
It will only take about 10 minutes
AND you can win RocKwiz related CD and DVD prizes...!
Follow the link above and let us know what you think.
Many Thanks.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Friday, September 6, 2013
Tour News
Stand-by for some really special live shows before Xmas.
Four nights only.
Kwizlist subscribers get priority ticketing opportunity offers.
We're excited!
Monday, September 2, 2013
New CD and DVD
Our latest compilation of RocKwiz Duets
With A Little Help From Our Friends
is now available on CD and DVD
THE VERY BEST OF SERIES 7, 8, and 9
NOW ON THE ONE CD!!!
Track Listing
(green songs link to youtube clips)
(green songs link to youtube clips)
1. Megan Washington & G. Love What Goes On
2. Ella Hooper & Dan Sultan Hold Back The Night
3. Patience Hodgson & Jae Laffer Here Comes Your Man
4. Bertie Blackman & Jim Keays The Last Time
5. Lanie Lane & Alex Burnett Rebel Rebel
6. Linda Bull & Black Joe Lewis If There’s A Will There’s A Way
7. Kimbra & Ben Salter Moving
8. Hayley Mary & Jon Stevens Where The Wild Roses Grow
9. Holiday Sidewinder & Andrew Stockdale Leather and Lace
10. Jess Cornelius & Mike Rudd Crying
11. Dash & Will & Kav Temperley I Won’t Back Down
12. Katy Steele & Bob Evans You’re Learning
13. Talei Wolfgramm & Simone Felice Long May You Run
14. Gemma Ray & Jon English Sand
15. Mary Gauthier & Jordie Lane Lost Highway
16. Loene Carmen & Jack Ladder Stumblin’ In
17. Shellie Morris & Ross Wilson Louie Louie
18. Kate Miller-Heidke & Jarrad Brown Crazy in Love
19. Lucie Thorne & Ronnie Charles The Times They Are A-Changin’
20. Marcia Hines & Old Man River (Ohad Rein) Ain’t No Mountain High Enough
21. Jenny Morris & Don McGlashan It’s Only Natural
22. Ella Hooper & Dan Sultan With A Little Help From My Friends
NOT ONLY ARE THESE DUETS AVAILABLE ON CD
BUT THEY ARE ALSO AVAILABLE ON DVD
WITH AN EXTRA NINE DUETS!
Victoria Williams & Henry Wagons The Christian Life
Susannah Espie & Brian Cadd Out Of Time
Sarah Blasko & Dan Crannich Heart On Fire
Sally Seltmann & Dave Mason As Soon As I Hang Up The Phone
Georgia Fields & Normie Rowe All I Gotta Do
Romy Hoffman & Alexander Gow So Long Marianne
Leah Flanagan & David Bridie Shipbuilding
Suzi Quatro and Chris Cheney Stumblin' In
Amy Findlay & Nick Barker Itchycoo Park
AND.... THERE ARE MORE EXTRAS...!
A cast commentary with Julia, Brian, James, Pete, Mark, and Dugald,
A tribute to Solomon Burke shot at the 2010 Queenscliff Music Festival,
and a special performance by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band
who we managed to squeeze into The Espy
for one very special performance.
CAN YOU LIVE WITHOUT
THIS SPECTACULAR RELEASE?
NOW AVAILABLE AT
JBHiFi
and selected retailers of good music
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
GOOD VIBRATIONS - Some Thoughts ... or ...
I was fourteen at the time. Pages from the
NME on my wall. I'd taken down the Zep posters to fit The Clash,
Pistols, Ian Dury.
Britain was in a three day working week
depression and Belfast was grim, grey, with a full-scale civil war
drip-feeding the media killings and car-bombings on a daily basis.
Good Vibrations was a second floor record
shop in Belfast run by Terri Hooley, an ex-trade union poet with a glass eye
which he frequently left on the counter.
It was the only place in the bombed-out city
centre where you wanted to go.
The store was so hip it hurt to climb the
stairs. The pressure to be cool enough to flip through the vinyl was
intense.
Andy White playing outside Good Vibrations in Belfast
I remember waiting on the stairs plucking up
enough courage buy a single - Rudi's 'Big Time' (the finest punk
song of all, and Good Vibration's first release). Queuing up for
Lene Lovich's autograph. Terri wrapping copies of 'Teenage Kicks' by
the Undertones (you had to hand-wrap singles if you wanted a picture
cover). 'Big Time', 'Suspect Device' (by SLF, not a Good Vibes single),
'Teenage Kicks'. Our very own un-national anthems.
Hotel California never meant anything to us
anyway - these songs were ours, recorded downtown in small studios by
guys who looked like us, played guitars like we did. The fanzine Sniffing
Glue had told us what to do - "Learn three chords, now form a band."
So we did.
Uniformity in the UK meant you could reach
the whole country very quickly. Everyone listened to John Peel,
10-12 every night on Radio 1. Everybody read the NME. Simple. Punk blew
our world apart.
When John Peel played Teenage Kicks
everything went crazy. But Terri never did. He was crazy already, and continues
to be to this day. He took the accolades, sold The Undertones, smashed up
record company offices. Richard Hell kissed his feet and
John Lennon sent him a suitcase of hash to distribute in Belfast. That's
what he told us, anyway.
I was on Good Vibrations during one of its
revivals in the late 1980s. Terri wanted distribution in Ireland on Warners for
the single. He thought we'd get it if we only could gatecrash the Warners
aftershow party for Aerosmith and drink the bar dry. He did, and they signed the
deal.
He bought up 1000 vinyl copies of my first
album, American cut-outs from MCA, piled them up on the counter in the
shop and sold them for a fiver each. Threw a party with the proceeds
and bought himself a beautiful designer suit which he unveiled at
the party, making an unforgettable entrance which involved
emerging from a coffin singing 'Laugh At Me' (his own Good Vibrations
single).
The party became Terri's annual Bob Marley
birthday celebration.
I last met him at my 2012 Belfast show, backstage
in the Students Union. He was telling me the story of how he
got a lifetime ban from that very building ... something happened, he
said, back in 1977. As he said that night ... “once a beatnik always a beatnik.
It’s better to burn than be forgotten. Rock'n'Roll will never die.”
Andy White, 26 July, 2013
For the Australian premiere of the film,
Brian introduced it as follows …
Good Vibrations is the story of a lovable
ratbag called Terri Hooley, whom opens a record store, called Good Vibrations, in
a bombed out street in Belfast in the late 70s at the height of The Troubles …
… but that’s a simple synopsis and it’s much
more than that. It’s about teenage dreams ... TEENAGE DREAMS, SO HARD TO BEAT.
It’s about the excitement and the spirit of seeing a band, discovering a band,
following a band. Telling anyone who’ll listen … YOU HAVE TO HEAR THEM!
EVERYBODY HAS TO HEAR THEM!
It’s about getting excited and exhilarated, getting
carried away, carried out, getting knocked over and somehow bouncing back. It’s
about the revolutionary power of the seven inch single.
Watching Good Vibrations I was dragged back to
dimly lit, smoky band rooms in Melbourne in the mid to late 1970s. Rooms like
Martinis, The Kingston, The Tiger Lounge, Hearts, Macys … following The Sports,
The Saints, The Sunnyboys … following Jo Jo Zep and The Falcons and meeting Streetie
and Stevo and a gang of their mates from Box Hill who worshipped at the shrine
of Joe Camilleri. They called themselves The Hammerhandles and stood up the
back at Martinis and cheered and chanted until Joe acknowledged them one night and
worked Hammerhandle into the monologue in ‘King Of Fools’.
But tonight’s about Belfast, though I’m sure
you’ll feel the connections.
Monday, August 5, 2013
New Photos Added
We've just added a bunch of pix
from this year's RocKwiz exploits to the
...and we're constantly updating the
(well, at least once a week!)
Saturday, May 25, 2013
SERIES ELEVEN
We're back on SBS ONE with another series of fresh episodes starting on May 25 at 8.30pm with a special shot at Bluesfest over the 2013 Easter weekend.
From June 1 there will be 14 brand new episodes recorded at the Gershwin Room.
They are longer shows with new games and more musical guests. Enjoy!!
They are longer shows with new games and more musical guests. Enjoy!!
Monday, February 11, 2013
The Rolling Stones At Kooyong Tennis Stadium … February 17, 1973.
By Brian Nankervis.
(an edited version of this story was published in The Age on 9th February 2013)
My friend Andy and I had been preparing for the Kooyong concerts for
years. We met in Year Seven, in 1968. I was already a Stones fan thanks to my
cousins. Andy had an older sister who insisted The Stones were cooler than the
Beatles. The Stones were our band and while we were too young to experience early
hits like ‘Satisfaction’, ‘Get Off My Cloud’ and ‘Paint It Black’, by the time
‘Jumping Jack Flash’ burst from the radio we were hooked. The political fury of
‘Street Fighting Man’ and the blues of ‘Beggars Banquet’ blew our tiny minds.
The cool kids at school liked The Stones and could reproduce the cowbell in
‘Honky Tonk Woman’ note for note. By 1969 they were dancing like Mick Jagger, hands
on hips, goose-stepping through the tuck shop, pointing at kids who had no idea
what they were doing. We knew what they were doing.
Then the live album from The Stones’ first tour of America in three
years arrived. ‘Get Yer Ya Yas Out’, was an incredible LP and Jagger’s stage patter
added humour to our mimicry. “Think I busted a button on my trousers. You don’t
want my trousers to fall down now do you?” We’d quote these comments on the
tram or in Biology in a loose approximation of Jagger’s cheeky drawl. We
thought we were hilarious.
We watched ‘Gimme Shelter’, stunned as the band played on while Hells
Angels beat fans with pool cues and a young man was stabbed. We were aroused by
Tina Turner fellating her microphone, fascinated by glimpses into hotel rooms
and amazed to see Keith playing a cassette version of ‘Brown Sugar’, just
recorded at Alabama’s Muscle Shoals studio. We were thrilled by the style and
the substance, the sound and the fury of this band, playing live to adoring
crowds. We wanted that in Melbourne.
‘Sticky Fingers’ in 1971 and ‘Exile On Main Street’ in 1972 added fuel
to the fire and when tickets went on sale near near ‘Surf Dive and Ski’, we
bought tickets for both shows. I reckon we paid $5 a ticket and carried them
with us all summer. “We Play, Rain Hail or Shine” the tickets said.
February 17 finally arrived and I sat high in the grandstand, waiting.
My stomach churned. It was incredibly hot, but I was oblivious to the rising
mercury. The Stones were in Hawthorn. Madder Lake had finished and “everything
seemed to be ready”. I looked at Andy and we sang a chorus of ‘Brown Sugar’,
people around us joined in and we started slow clapping. Suddenly there was
movement down the front, the crowd began to roar and I started shaking. The Rolling
Stones were about to play.
Forty years later I treasure that initial, heady thrill of seeing ‘The
Greatest Rock and Roll Band In the World’ walk on stage in the blistering
afternoon heat and begin playing. I laughed when they launched into the first
song, ‘Brown Sugar’. Laughed with exhilaration and relief. Laughed to hear
Keith Richards play those chords out front of Charlie's solid beat. Here they
were, The Rolling Stones playing right in front of me. I can still see the amps
covered in white material, Keith swaggering in flared denim jeans, Bill
standing like a statue, Mick Taylor playing his guitar effortlessly, Bobby Keys
stepping forward to play sax solos just like on the records and the black
security guard who sat on stage, clapping along with every song while trams
rattled down Glenferrie Road.
They were loud and raw and loose, the crowd danced in the aisles and we were united, experiencing that intangible magic we’d been yearning for. The set list was great. Hit after hit after hit. ‘Tumbling Dice’, ‘Happy’, ‘Gimme Shelter’, ‘Sweet Virginia’. Keith and Mick Taylor trading guitar solos on the slow blues of ‘Love In Vain’, the mock theatrics of ‘Midnight Rambler’ with Jagger on his knees, moaning and whispering, slapping his belt onto the shiny stage. The visceral power of ‘Jumping Jack Flash’. It’s a gas, gas, gas.
They finished with ‘Street Fighting Man’ and while Mick threw rose
petals from a bucket and yelled “we gotta go” over a wall of noise, I was
elated, knowing that for me it wasn’t over. We had tickets for the next show a
few hours later. At night, in the dark, under lights. It would be more like the
concerts we’d seen on film and I wouldn’t be so nervous and it wouldn’t be so
hot. We’d seen fans sneak down and stand in front of the stage and we were
determined that tonight we would be there.
We filed out of the stadium comparing notes and favourite moments and
stood in groups, not sure what to do before the next show. Someone suggested we
jump over a nearby fence and soon we were swimming in the Scotch College pool,
in our jocks, doing bombs and horsies, singing ‘Brown Sugar’. “I said yeah,
yeah, yeah, whoo!” … ecstatic that we were about to see The Rolling Stones. In
Melbourne. In a tennis stadium. Again!
SPECIAL THANKS to Bruce Thomas for his photos.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)