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.
Perhaps that’s why, for musicians and non-musicians seeking to release their inner Jimi, Hendrix or Page, that famous Risky Business scene with the pantless Tom Cruise in the living room still strikes a chord.
“Good air guitar,” insists current World Champ Craig Billmeier, “is done without shame, reservation, or regard for personal safety.”
Which, in a digital culture that spoon feeds us rockstar fantasies through Guitar Hero and Rock Band, a glimpse of the glory with none of the calluses on your fingers from actually playing, is pretty impressive.
It’s allure, or certainly the hundreds who filled the Troubadour on June 19th, is even more impressive in this era of preprogrammed predestinated organized fun of not merely addictive videogames, but DVRs, social networking cabals, Blackberries and iPhones, Netflix and a seemingly million other distractions to keep people at home or isolated from each other.
Cutting to the chase, one patron poetically put it very loudly on Friday night, “it’s so bad it’s good and I love it.”
Sad to say, having started in Boston in late May and traveling all over the country before hitting LA, the U.S. Air Guitar Championships [1] are winding down now.
Not that you don’t still have a chance to catch the sonic carnage and fun out on the West Coast. They’ll be in Portland on the 23rd, Seattle on the 24th and then back in California for Golden Gate and Bay Bridge Regionals on June 26 and 27th in San Francisco.
On August 7th the 25 regional finalists from across the country will face off against each other at the 9:30 Club in Washington D.C. where a U.S. Air Guitar Champion will rise. That winner, representing the nation that invented rock’n’roll, will then head to Oulu, Finland to battle Hot Lixx and other winners from around the world on August 19th.
Add some Clearasil, microwavable pizzas and stinky sneakers to that list and you have one of the ultimate innocent and megageeky teen fantasies.
That is to come, but if what happened in L.A. is any indication, it will be a blast. Like so many good nights should, it all ended at the Troubadour with the Top 5 – Top 7 actually because of two ties – flaunting their best on Pat Benatar’s “Heartbreaker.”
In the end, after the last fingers had flown over the last imaginary fret, Julian “Hardcore Harry” Vican, channeling his noticeable resemblance to Jack Black to the 11th degree, inched by the rockabilly inclined Kei Tsutsumi by 0.1 points to take L.A.’s banner to the Finals.
The night officially closed with all the judges and contestants, like FREAKSTAR, former L.A. champ Houston Rock It and Guitarith Vadar, up on stage doing their best or worst to the duel guitar solos of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird.”
It was simply the best and worst thing you’d ever seen.