look at that dickhead in sydney who didn't get the joke

a ramble about twenty-odd years of tv tapings, with songs!

The period between 2012 and and 2014 was filled with a whole mish mash of tapings for all sorts of shows, many of which I have only the barest of recollections. I remember going to a whole bunch of tapings for at least one of every member of the Gruen family (Transfer, Nation, Sweat, Planet), at least one episode of Randling (which I think I actually enjoyed at the time), a few episodes of The Joy Of Sets (one of which featured my, at time of writing, only paid TV appearance to date), and one episode of The Unbelievable Truth.

Apart from having a couple of the Chaser guys in the cast along with Toby Truslove because it was that period of the 2010s when Toby Truslove was in just about everything, I remember absolutely nothing else about The Unbelievable Truth. The only rock solid memory I have was that they were playing The Cure's 2001 Greatest Hits compilation album cover-to-cover before the cameras started rolling.

I think they might've got up to "Close To Me" (track 7!) before the show finally got underway.

I was still deep in my Australian Comedy fandom phase in the early 2010s, and for a few years I would spend a few days in March/April in Melbourne for the Comedy Festival. I mananged to get myself to a few tapings during that time, one of which was The Project at the Como building in South Yarra.

This is my journal entry from April 8 2013, which I still think provides the best summary of that night:

"Today featured a trip to South Yarra to the Channel 10 studio for a taping of The Project. To be honest, I didn't really want to go but it was actually pretty interesting to see how live TV is put together, how vastly different Channel 10 security is compared to the ABC's (we had a security slip of paper to keep with us!), and how it's important to ensure that certain people have particular emails forwarded to them lest they tun up wearing the wrong sort of shoes and they then have to change into a pair of studio-issue Crocs.

... one guess as to who had to wear the Crocs."

It genuinely was interesting to see how live television is made, and how amazingly smooth and precise the whole operation was. I had not seen anything run that smoothly before. Or since.

They were playing some late 90s/early 00s classics in the holding area before I was assigned the Channel 10 Crocs, this song being one of them. I'm pretty sure this led to a conversation between two of the GNW Regs I was there with about how Five were the most severely underrated boy band, and how I had once had an inflatable picture frame (free with an issue of Smash Hits magazine) and I'd stuck a picture of Ritchie from Five in it to try to convince myself that I did indeed like boys.

(it didn't work, btw.)

Sometime in 2013, I answered a random casting call for extras on Twitter for a new ABC comedy series. A few days later, I found myself on a chartered bus in the back streets of Marrickville/Sydenham (I'm honestly not entirely sure; it was around that kind of Inner West-ish area) being a proud racist arsehole for a sketch in this show, chanting such classic slogans such as "WE GREW HERE! YOU FLEW HERE!" as the bus slowly drove along.

It made perfect sense in context. And I'm sure it will therefore come as absolutely no surprise that that sketch for what would later become Wednesday Night Fever never made it to air, right?

It got played in the studio a number of times, though. And I know that because for some bizarre reason, I ended up going to the recording of every single episode of that show. Even the unaired pilot! In hindsight, I think it was again a matter of having something to do and something to look forward to during the week when things were a little bit shit in life?

Anyway. It was from these recordings that I learned from Dave Eastgate and Boner Contention (the house band) that you cannot show an erect penis on Australian television. "THAT'S WHY THE BONER IS CONTENTIOUS!!!" Dave would often yell to the crowd while wildly gesturing to the not quite flaccid dicks on the band banner, usually while one of the guitar players would practice his heavy metal facial expressions when he thought no one was watching.

When he wasn't yelling about contentious boners, Dave would get the band to play some heavy metal favourites, usually not getting very far before the show started again. There was one (1) night when they managed to get through a whole song - Van Halen's "Panama". And the guitarist's facial expression practice paid off spectacularly.

It might not have been a particularly memorable, or good, show, but I still hold Wednesday Night Fever close to my heart. Even though the bus sketch didn't make it in, I was a credited extra for another sketch and it is, at time of writing, one of only two shows I've received a credit for

The other one is 19 Reasons To Love If You Are The One. The less said about that the better.

Now, strictly speaking, this is not a TV recording musical association. But it is RocKwiz, and part of the performance in quesiton was recorded and put onto YouTube, so it's close enough.

This was during the 2012 "Some Kind Of Genius" live tour, and I managed to score a wildcard via a Facebook quiz to play for a contestant spot during the Sydney show at the Hordern Pavillion.

I absolutely should not have been playing that Facebook quiz at the time I was playing it. That's all I will say on that matter.

But anyway, I played the pre-show quiz with Brian Nankervis and got made it into the main show by ONE (1!) point. And then the four winners were taken backstage to get a briefing on the main show, Julia Zemiro breezed in and introduced herself to us and I was very very starstruck, and then we were told that there'd be a part of the show where two of us would perform a karaoke version of "Don't Go Breaking My Heart".

I stupidly volunteered to be Kiki Dee, and an older bloke named Steve would be my Elton John.

Steve and I were then taken into Julia's dressing room (!) and had a practice run with Julia and James Black on acoustic guitar (!!) and we sounded fantastic!

The main show then started. I had a minor panic attack when the Orkestra played "Who Can It Be Now?" and I realised that oh shit this was actually happening, I had Kate Miller-Heidke and Suze DeMarchi sit next to me, I stumbled on my words when Julia touched me ever so gently on my shoulder when she asked what my first concert (Peter Combe, Illawarra Performing Arts Centre) and first album (either Simply Red's Greatest Hits, or Billy Joel's Greatest Hits) was, a guy on the other team kept beating me to the buzzer by a fraction of a second, and we got to the part of the show where Steve and I would sing Don't Go Breaking My Heart with the Orkestra and Vika & Linda... and I sung off-key.

And of course that was the bit they recorded and put online.

You could probably imagine that after that experience at the Hordern Pavillion I would be so damn excited to finally then get the chance to see RocKwiz get made at its home at the Espy in St. Kilda. And that's exactly what I got a couple of years afterwards. It was going to be The Highlight of that year's MICF trip. It was The Thing I was most looking forward to.

And I'm sorry to say it turned out to be The Biggest Disappointment.

Now I must stress, the actual show itself was not at fault in any way. The show itself was great! It was the Espy that was the issiue. It was way too hot. It was way too crowded. It was way too "standing room only". I was wearing shoes that were way too uncomfortable.

And eventually, all that combined to make me feel way too unwell to stay until the end of the show.

I think we left just after an extended guest appearance from Daryl Braithwaite, and just before the closing duet, which was "Do I Wanna Know?"

As we waited at the tram stop out the front for a ride back into the city, I said quite firmly that I would never go to another TV taping again.

And for the next four years, I didn't.