Friday Night: Air Guitar Finals
U.S. Air Guitar Finals
Friday, Aug. 8
The Grand
By Jennifer Maerz
Better than: Video games about pretending to play an instrument
There is, of course, something inherently ridiculous about getting on stage on front of a sold out crowd to play an invisible instrument. But then again, there is something inherently ridiculous about 99.9 percent of musicians who use real instruments on stage.
Watching 24 contestants from around the country compete for the title of America's Air Guitar hero on Friday night at the Grand, I was struck by what great entertainers most of these guys -- and two gals -- really were. They had to use their imagination to much greater lengths than most real guitarists who take the stage -- the musicians who stand there and stare at their laces, or their hands, instead of bringing out their inner Eddie Van Halens. On Friday, everyone had an inner EVH to give to the crowd -- except maybe for that one dude who did his performance in slow motion. But even he gets props for taking the chance to make an ass of himself for the audience's benefit.
I have to say there was more flash and fun at the Grand on Friday than I imagine happened in an whole week's worth of shows (and that's even as great as Dolly Parton's gig at the Greek was). A couple highlights: pink spandex pants; lightning bolts shaved into heads and chests; fake blood pellets oozing from contestants' mouths; stage dives into the crowd, on to surfboards, and on top of inflatable sea creatures; back flips; splits; and broken appendages.
There was even a very, um, enthusiastic stage mom. I sat by the judges (from the Onion, the Chronicle, and Los Angeles), and next to the mother of a contestant from NY named William Ocean.
Mother Ocean came all the way from Ohio and was bedazzled with buttons of her son, flashing-blue-light glasses, flags, posters of her son, and a t-shirt with his name on it. She yelled at anyone who blocked her view, and meticulously wrote down each contestant's score so she know where her son stood. In the end, the young Ocean was good -- he was the guy who jumped on a surfboard -- but he was shut out by our local guys.
A local comedian named Awesome blew everyone out of the water in the first round, but was upset by SF's winner (and some-time Air Guitar emcee) Hot Lixx Hulihan. Hot Lixx broke a thumb in the early round, taped that shit up during half time, and came out to shred without regard to pain in the finals -- leaping from the stage on to an inflatable whale that his friends carried him around the crowd on.
(Hot Lixx getting his thumb fixed backstage)
Congrats to Hot Lixx -- who will represent the U.S.A. in Finland at the Air Guitar world championships later this month -- and really to everyone who took part in making the realm of rockdom a much sillier (and sometimes stupider) place for humankind.
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