How Well Do You Know Your Music Trivia?
Television game shows on the commercial networks are a lot of fun but the large sums of money on offer can lead to some serious competition. If you're looking for TV game shows where the result is irrelevant and where a funny answer is just as good as a correct answer, then look no further than SBS and the ABC.
The music trivia shows, Spicks and Specs on the ABC and Rock Wiz on SBS, are more reminiscent of an evening playing board games in the lounge room than a serious competition. We are exposed to music every day and everyone has, at least, a little knowledge of music trivia. Remember devoting countless hours to listening to and reading about your musical heroes when you should have been doing your school homework? Well now you can take the exams that you studied so hard for.
Spicks and Specks, hosted by Adam Hills, is an irreverent journey through the world of music. Regular team leaders, comedian Alan Brough and JJJ Presenter Myf Warhurst, are joined by Australian and international entertainers to compete for nothing more than bragging rights. Questions cover all eras and all genres of music from classical to country and from disco to death metal and although we are yet to see questions about nerdcore gangsta hip hop they can't be too far away.
Rather than stick to a standard question and answer format, Spick and Specks features rounds of questions that put the 'game' back into game shows. On any given night, the teams may be asked to; match facts to famous people; decide whether a person in a photograph is a musician of a serial killer; identify songs edited together into a 30 second collage; identify songs played on a bicycle powered turntable; choose the correct ending to a famous musical story; guess the song based only on a team member's drawings. The game that is the audience favourite is where a team member has to the tune of well-known songs substituting the real lyrics for words taken from an unrelated book, usually a dull sounding text book, provided by Adam Hills.
Adam Hills has an uncanny ability to allow proceedings to follow tangents of hilarity and then bring the show back on course. There's plenty of time for light-hearted banter between rounds and the host, team members and audience laugh all the way through.
RocKwiz, hosted by Julia Zemiro brings pub trivia to our TV screens. RocKwiz has more of a rock music focus than Spicks and Specks and has considerable 'rock credibility' because it is filmed at the Esplanade Hotel, the epicentre of Melbourne's music scene. Julia Zemiro is aided by 'rock brain' Brian Nankervis and the RocKwiz Orchestra which provides live music for the show.
There's no glitz and glamour on RocKwiz, instead there's rock and roll grunge all the way. The action happens on stage in the Esplanade Hotel's Gershwin Room with little effort put into dressing it up for TV. The competing teams each have a musical celebrity and two audience members who answer music trivia questions and in keeping with the pub theme, the scores are updated by a guy in a singlet holding up numbers written on big pieces of cardboard. Like a night of pub trivia, RocKwiz is a fun night out but you get to stay comfy on your own couch.
For music trivia junkies, Spicks and Specks and RockWiz satisfy the need to show off obscure musical knowledge and complement each other beautifully. Spicks and Specks screens on the ABC on Wednesdays at 8.30pm and RockWiz screens on SBS but is currently having a rest for the Soccer World Cup.
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