I will admit that at times, I play the air guitar. Okay, actually, whenever I get a MySpace bulletin that asks if I have played air guitar in the last week, my response is usually “Yeah.” But, I only play air guitar alone or in front of my three year old. But apparently, playing air guitar in public is very popular.
And the guys that do this take it very, very seriously. Every year since 1996, there has been a world air guitar championship to crown the king of air guitars. Each year, the world championship is held in Oulu Finland with Ochi “Dainoji” Yosuke of Japan being crowned the first winner.
This year, the Annual Air Guitar World Championship (its official title) will be held on September 5 – 7. The newly crowned US champion will be there. On August 16th in New York City, Andrew “William Ocean” Litz became the new US champion. He managed to defeat fourteen others for the championship, including the former champ, Craig “Hott Lixx Hulahan” Billmeier. As part of his prize for winning, Litz received $1,000, an “air” trophy (does that mean it wasn’t real?), and a ticket to the Oulu championship. At the Oulu event, he will be joined by winners from other championships around the world – the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and Mexico – as well as other hopefuls.
Now you may be asking, “Just what goes on in an air guitar championship?” They usually start out playing to one song they have chosen and just to mix it up a bit, one song the organizer has chosen, which is kept secret until the performance. Each air guitarist is rated using a 6.0 score system, similar to what they use for figure skating. They are judged on things such as technical merit (how real does it look and do they actually hit the chords), stage presence (we all know how important that is!), and “airness,” that is how much the performance was an object of art itself.
If you cannot make it to any of the championships, but would like to learn more about these crazy air guitar heroes, check out Air Guitar Nation, a DVD about the US Championships that will be available on DVD on August 27th.