The 2006 San Francisco Regional
Air Guitar Competition

It’s two hours before showtime and there are twenty-plus contestants backstage. We’re finally starting to get to know each other by the time the supply of MGD runs out. Nobody anticipated much of an audience so none of our friends have the foresight to buy advanced tickets. Thirty minutes before showtime one of competitors wanders out from backstage in search of more beer and returns pasty-faced. He bares tales of “a wall-to-wall crowd” and “200 people lined up down the block being turned away” and “sold out” and, worst of all “they’re not giving us any more beer.”

None of us contestants wind up having anybody we know in the audience to root for us. Similarly, none of us will have anyone in attendance to make fun of us the next day. The humility of playing air guitar publicly begins to sink in. We band together to support one another and the camaraderie is comforting, exciting, and totally devoid of ego.

The competition begins with Round One where all contestants are given 60 seconds to do their best with their own routines and their own material. Some guys are rocking out with the awkward abandon you’d expect from a 30-something office worker who has never strummed a real guitar before. Others contestants jump and kick and wag their tongues like it’s the only chance they ever get to do so. And yet still more air guitarists perform pieces of high conceptual value.

One of my favorites was a gentleman who appeared backstage looking like Thomas Dolby: blazer, turtleneck, 80’s prep haircut and glasses, leather shoes. He sat down on stage with his left foot on a collaspable footstand and indulged everyone with Concerto in A major. The guitar part didn’t come until 30 seconds into his routine and by then people were pissed. Well, the classless morons were pissed, the rest of us thought his commitment to his bit was worth the abuse. He didn’t score very well but he earned my highest respects. That could very easily be me in a few minutes.

Having absolutely no aspiration to win, only entertain, I decide I will give the crowd a little bit of the ol’ switcheroo. The night before the contest I spent 20 minutes melding together a flamenco piece by Carlos Montoya called “Fandangos de Huelva y Verdiales” with the solo from Metallica’s “Shortest Straw.” (This is roughly 20 minutes more than I spent on plotting out my physical routine.) By having a soft but emotive guitar part in the beginning the audience would likely not be expecting Metallica to slap them in the face. With the music sufficiently mashed together I forfeit practicing in lieu of retaining my last shreds of dignity for a few more hours. My hope is that come showtime my moves and my rocking out and my flailing of limbs will naturally follow whatever the music makes me do.

Whatever it made me do ended up advancing me to Round Two.

As they announce who is moving on each winner is brought on stage until we’re all standing shoulder-to-shoulder. We are then told that we will all have to perform to a compulsory song of the organizer’s choice. None of us have any idea what the song is going to be and most of us are worried that we will be forced to air guitar stupidly to a song we don’t know in front of a sold out audience at The Independent. And the club still hasn’t replenished the backstage beer cooler.

Just as they are cueing up the song for all to hear the MC, Björn Türoque - a talented air guitarist in his own right, obliges my incessant inquiries and whispers in my ear “the song is California Uber Alles. Do you know it?”

By the Dead Kennedys? Are you kidding?! The Ronald Reagan version? The Jerry Brown version? The live version, the jazz version, the LP version…?!?! At that moment I knew exactly how Cliff Clavin felt when he was on Jeopardy and the categories were Beer, US Postal Service, and People Who Live With Their Mothers.

Despite Jello Biafra and East Bay Ray vowing to never work together again I do my best to channel them both into one persona and proceed to kick maximum ass.

I win.

Ho shit, I win.

The fella placing 2nd (also named Craig and doing a Metallica song) turns to me and says, “Awesome! You won!! So are you gonna tell anyone or are you just going to keep this a secret?” I honestly have to consider the question.

Cedric, one of the U.S. Air Guitar’s organizers, is too inebriated to explain what it means to win but instead sends me home with a certificate that has, I think, my named scrawled near one of the empty lines. Talk of flying me to New York for a national competition comes up but no one even wrote down my full name so I’m skeptical.

Keep going to:
* Phase II: New York City *

* Phase I: San Francisco *
* The Prequel *