Live Review: US Air Guitar Championship [08.16.07]

My love of seven inch records has taken me in a lot of crazy directions, but none so far compare to finding a 7" from Hot Lixx Hulahan. I heard it was 2 sides of nothing but silence. When I finally found it there weren't even grooves, it was completely blank on both sides.

I heard about Air Guitar Nation, the documentary about the US competition and how for years the US wasn't even represented in the world championships in Finland.

Hot Lixx aka Craig Billmeier won in 2006 and would be back at the Filmore at Irving Plaza to defend his title.

I emailed Craig about the 7" and found out he had been in a long list of hardcore bands in san francisco including recently playing in a Guns and Roses cover band which only plays the Appetite for Destruction album called Rocket Queens.

There were so many questions...what would be left if you took out skill and instruments from the equation? The performances would be entirely about showmanship. It was so anti rock and roll in a way. Anyone could do this but could it also get to the point where it's become something else entirely? It wasn't about imitating a real guitar player, did air guitar have it's own vocabulary? Was it so unpunk that it was punk again? I had to hand it to Craig, this seven inch symbolized the entire idea of the show.

It never stopped being weird watching with a sold out crowd, air guitarist after air guitarist, manically running back and forth across the stage, throwing beer, stage diving into the crowd. It was a battle of one up-ing each other with concert stereotypes. Big Rig, one of the competing twin brothers set his arm on fire during a performance. NYC Hometown hero William Ocean, who performed like an angry Will Farrell, high fived the front row and jumping butt crushed cans of beer. Shirts were ripped off, invisible guitars were tuned and beer sprayed into the crowd.

The audience was just as insane, throwing beer cans at the judges, especially Jason Jones from the daily show who was the most accurate judge I thought, trying to stick to some kind of realistic scoring system, keeping his standards high. The performances were kept short, but at times it was a bad America's got talent and I couldn't blame the audience for creating their own entertainment. It almost turned ugly when someone threw a full can of Budweiser at Willy O, bloodying his nose, but he brushed it off for extra points with the judges. Rachel Dratch from SNL said that anyone who was willing to go that far deserved to win.

Craig went near the end of the pack and scored high enough to make it to the finals. That's when they randomly picked 'Get your hands off my woman' from The Darkness which the finalists got to listen to once and then perform. This is when it really got insane, with costume changes, fire, and twice as much beer. Craig ended his set by climbing to the top of the PA's and breaking a bottle over his head. The crowd went nuts, this is what they wanted, fog machines, lazers and stuff breaking.

But it was the crowd favorite William Ocean and his legions of fans with life size cutouts and who threw water whenever his name was announced, that were too much for just one man. William outscored his competition and took home an air trophy (an empty plexiglass box) and tickets to the World finals in Finland...that's more than I can say for my hours of practice air guitaring Living on a Prayer in the basement when I was 12.