Cami Airisol woos the judges - Photo by Alexa Jones (full set)
Imagine this exchange if you will - In a hospital emergency room, some nurse or ER doctor is asking, "So, how did you break your leg?" Broken leg dude says, "Well, I was competing in an Air Guitar Contest..."
Fortunately or unfortunately, I missed the high-flying and leg-breaking hijinks of that special contestant. But I did manage to squeeze my way up to the front of the stage by the emergency exit door while the sweet-but-surly security guy kept knocking his way back in, and the door would swing open, ambulance lights flashing right outside. As we all know - Ambulance equals excitement.
As all of the contestants and crowds will tell you, there is absolutely nothing like an Air Guitar contest. Emceed with great energy and showmanship by "Retired air guitarist and perennial runner-up" Bjorn Turoque, Round One would bring us all sorts of entertainment, however great or embarrassing the contestants might have been. There was beer spray flying through the air, along with sweat in the sweltering heat of the venue. There was rug-burn and killer riser jumps. The judges for the evening were Cities 97 DJ and host of Sunday night's Freedom Rock, Brian Oake, everyone's favorite local musician/showman/piano-humper Mark Mallman, and the toughest judge of the night -Andy Lindquist. A huge crowd had assembled at the Varsity for the event. Air Guitar is gaining in American popularity, while it is already incredibly popular in Europe and elsewhere. The phenomenon is even caught on film in the upcoming documentary, "Air Guitar Nation," which took Sundance by storm this year and won an "Audience Award," and is slated for a Minneapolis showing at the Bryant Lake Bowl on July 12 and July 19.
In order to participate, the contestants registered online - with the exception of one girl from the front who got to go up last-minute and do a surprisingly not-that-shitty performance to "Rock You Like A Hurricane" a la The Scorpions. The others paid a 20 dollar entrance fee, came up with a killer stage name, selected a 60 second snippet of guitar-centric music to rock out to, and wore crazy costumes to help get into character. Oh yeah - and probably had a LOT of drinks in their collective bellies. There were two rounds, the first in which all the contestants perform and are judged and scored much like figure skating - the high score being a 6.0, this night with a bit of good-natured ribbing and occasional spite by officiators Oake, Mallman and Lindquist - who seemed generally displeased with the group as a whole. Understandably so, as apparently he is one of the main judges on US Air Guitar's National Tour that has it's Championship Bout in New York City on August 16. They were judged on the three main tenets of air guitar: Technical Merit, Stage Presence and my personal favorite, "Airness," which, according to it's entry on Wikipedia is "how much the performance was an object of art by itself, not only a simulation of playing guitar."
The second round consisted of the top five scorers working their mojo to a pre-selected song. Tonight's was the opening 60 seconds of "Heart of The Sunrise" by those Art/Prog Rock geniuses, Yes. Some of the stage names of the top five: Magnus Manchicken, White's Not Right, and Cammie Aerosol. Manchicken even had his own Tawny Kitaen-like groupie. I think one of the follies by two of the contestants was taking their part down into the crowd and out of the eyeshot of the judges, most notably by an air-guitarist that took it to the judges, narrowly spilling Brian Oake's drink and managing to dump Mallman's. Bad break, I have to say, because that dude had game and a definite grasp on "Airness." He was heavily penalized for his mistake, I must report.
In the end it was Cami Airisol that would take home the title, with her highly acrobatic act, even if she was slightly lacking in the technical department at times. The judges were able to look past that, given the fact that she actually did flips, included some riser jumping and some good old Hendrix-style playing on her knees. She was also effectively dressed in garb that would have made the ladies in Vixen proud. It was incredibly evident by her second round performance that she would win. As she was announced the night's winner with her perfect score of 6.0s around, all the contestants and all the air-guitarists in the crowd were invited to get up and play to the anthemic strains of Skynyrd's "Free Bird," a perfect song to end with. As I stood in the middle of the Varsity, it had cleared out quite a bit and I was able to witness the writhing glory that was about 40 people playing their imaginary instruments and sharing in the hilarious joy that is Air Guitar.
