To paraphrase Jon Landau’s famous quote about Bruce Springsteen, I have seen the future of rock’n’roll and its name is Air Guitar.
The thing is, unlike Landau’s praise of New Jersey’s finest, it sort of snuck up on me. I’d seen the odd news item and heard a story or two, but I’d never given it much thought beyond the kitsch value.
Nonetheless, the revelation became clear at a packed Troubadour on Friday night at the Los Angeles Regional heat of the 2009 US Air Guitar Championship.
I heard some skin tingling rock and I saw an array of sweaty, sleazy and sexy questionable talents, with the stage strewn with broken dreams and outlandish outfits -- including a deli counter ticket dispenser masquerading as a cod piece --and it was good.
Actually the LA regional Air Guitar heat was OK, with most of the 18 contestants doing a lot more bounding around than actual air guitaring and few of them having any idea where the notes actually would be on a real axe.
But that’s only a portion of the jambalaya that was cooking. When the lubricated spice of the baying crowd full of frat boys, bespectacled hipsters, aging rockers and perky fashionistas -- essentially the exact cross demographic you need to succeed in the American pop culture landscape -- and the way-down-the-list celebrity judges, which included former super groupie Pamela Des Barres and current World Air Guitar Champion and San Fran native Craig “Hot Lixx Hulahan” Billmeier, were added, you had that increasingly rare cuisine of unadulterated fun.
With only the slightest trace of exaggeration, Billmeier calls Air Guitar “the last pure art form.” Which would just be a punch line except for the great time on display at the LA Regional heat and “It requires no resources, it can be performed in any environment,” the 2008 champ explains. “Everyone has one and it can never be taken away from you.”
Well when you put it like that, Hot Lixx, I can see what you got in the game. I would also add that, more than simply karaoke with flying fingers, Air Guitar seemed, like the legendary Troubadour itself, to be calling back to the crossroads when rock was still a bit unpredictable.
Truth be told, on most days I’d be the first one to say there ought to be a law against air guitaring. Seriously, on sheer embarrassment factor alone, air guitar, air scratching and air drumming in public should not be tolerated. Air Guitaring is something that needs to be done in the privacy of your own home.
Having said that, we all, especially men, should cop to the more than occasional moves. Anything by AC/DC or Slash’s solo on Lenny Kravitz’s version of “Fields of Joy,” to name but two of many, find me strumming through the air in an arena in my mind.
More than one real rock star has admitted to spending hours in front of the mirror perfecting the moves and look a long time before they actually got around to learning an instrument.
