Gudinski Beats Chugg In Tense RocKwiz Showdown

Michael Gudinski emerged victorious over Michael Chugg in Sydney last night, but it had nothing to do with booking an act or landing tour. The two music industry veterans and old sparring partners were team captains on for a promotional RocKwiz show. Held at the Metro Theatre, the event was thrown by streaming service MOG as their launch event.

Going head to head, the two traded jibes from the panel and although it was all in good humour, there were definitely a few tense moments.

At one point Chugg, who was more often than not the instigator, made a reference to Frontier touring, the company that the two famously worked on together before Chugg left to form his own company. "Frontier's still here," Gudinski reminded him.

Chugg revealed that he'll be bringing Steve Miller to Australia next year, but when co-host Brian Nankervis asked for free tickets for everyone in attendance he declined. That was OK though, Gudinski quipped, because when it doesn't sell his counterpart would be giving the tickets away for free.

The show featured other guest panelists including Tex Perkins, Josh Pyke, Patience Hodgson and Claire Bowditch and was broadcast live to the web through Telstra, MOG's launch partner. Not sure if anyone told Chugg though, who was dropping 'fuck' into every second sentence - amplified by the fact that contrary to popular belief, his microphone manner could use some fine-tuning. Host Julia Zemiro had to ask him to move back from the mic just a little but on a few occasions.

"I got one, fuck me," he said after answering a question he'd buzzed, rather that one that someone else had. "See, that's a sentence without the word 'fuck' Chuggi," Gudinski - who said he donated his appearence fee to charity - said later.

Another playful taunt came as Gudinski referenced the recent AMID Power 50 when he said, "I'm number one." All Chugg could come back with was "I'm number three."

#3 and #1 after the battle

The night went down to a tie-break question, with Gudinski's team (Hodgson, Bowditch and a crowd-member Kimberley Galceran) taking home the win.

Speaking on MOG itself, Chugg went so far as to say that it could "bury" rival Spotify. "The vibe from the hip, young kids in my office is that MOG is going to bury Spotify and take Australian music another step closer to world domination," he said.

The show will be streamed at bigpondmusic.com/bpm for two weeks after it is uploaded in the near future.