You might be reading that title and thinking "wait, you went to Finland?" No... but it isn't a second-hand recap because I watched the whole thing live online. Now that that's out of the way, let's dive in!
The Air Guitar World Championships draw the winners of national air guitar competitions all over the world. They also have a Dark Horse event which is a walk-on for anyone motivated enough to come all the way to Oulu, Finland and sign up. Last year, Nordic Thunder came in second in the US - Airistotle was the US champion - but he went out to Finland and competed in the Dark Horse, won that, and thereby got into the world championship... and won that, too.
This year, Lt. Facemelter won the US Air Guitar National Finals. Behind him by a fraction of a point was Mean Melin. Almost immediately, everyone started clamoring for him to go to Finland, too - he could just as easily have won Nationals, he's clearly got the talent, and he wanted it really, really badly. At first, he demurred. But peer pressure won out in the end, thank goodness, and he hopped on a plane to Finland to sign up for the Dark Horse.
Well, he knocked that Dark Horse out of the park, and, along with US Air Guitar's own Thunderstroock, who was also in Oulu for the same purpose, qualified for the world stage. And now, into the story of the competition.
Round 1
So, the four Americans, Facemelter, Nordic (defending his title), Thunderstroock, and Melin, picked numbers, along with everyone else. Woe! All of them pulled early numbers - 2, 3, 7, and 8 - out of a total of 17 competitors. As has been covered in these pages before, it's tough to go early. The judges haven't had enough to drink yet, and they're saving the high scores in case someone better comes along. They would have to be really good to overcome this handicap.
First up was AIRGUS, out of Belgium. He was another Dark Horse contestant who had won his way onto the world stage. If you heard anyone say his arms were on fire, they don't just mean he was shredding wildly - he had pyrotechnics in his jacket sleeves and his arms were, quite literally, on fire. Scores started a trend that didn't let up the entire time of being all over the place. This might have been an artifact of the 5 judges, top and bottom discarded setup - if the judges are honest, and there's no reason to assume they weren't, this means it's going to be different people whose scores are chucked out each time, so the "high" judge and the "low" judge might be different judges each time.
Exemplifying this, Mean Melin went up next and got scores which all the spectators on the chat felt were a bit low. He brought the same technical precision, intense rock faces, and metal ferocity as he had at Nationals, and Finland does like metal... He didn't get the bone, but we were just really nervous - what with going second, there are just so many opportunities to get knocked off your horse, and he had the kind of scores that could potentially be knocked off.
Well. Onwards. Next up was Thunderstroock. Years past have proven that Finland loves a creepy mustache, so he had to be feeling pretty good. He ripped apart yet another t-shirt, though, which stunned the crowd. Having not seen his other recent performances, they didn't know to expect the wanton destruction of clothing. He also did well, but trailed Melin.
Veteran Heart Buckboard, from Germany, was up next. He also came in as a Dark Horse - they put all the Dark Horses first - and you could just about say he was a "plainclothes air guitarist" except that he had a belt buckle that spelled out "AIR." His scores, however, were low, and it wasn't his year.
The final Dark Horse contestant was Your Daddy, from Russia, who could have compared fake IDs with Tyrannicus. He had been described as "Facemelter has a baby with Airistotle" (by Facemelter himself) and that was basically bang on. He was a lot of fun to watch, and scooted into place right behind Mean Melin.
Now began the turns of the various national winners. First up, France, with Benny Fairguson. Another plainclothesman, he took rather more heat in the chatroom than I felt was strictly warranted. He was solid, although he fell victim to the European disease of always ending on a fade-out. No! Don't do that! What are you supposed to do with a fade-out? Slowly disappear? And everyone just loves to do it over there. Incomprehensible.
Nordic was up next to defend his world championship and rocked Slayer, although not the 6:66 edit he's been doing for the halftime show at all the US Air Guitar competitions. Probably much to his relief. He may have had more practice than anyone else on that stage what with all those demo rounds he's done. His scores tied him with Your Daddy.
Then, the final American, 2013 US Air Guitar National Champion Lt. Facemelter. I suspect the European crowd loved his Zubaz unironically. Oh, Europe. What are we going to do with you. I thought he had a really strong shot here - some might disagree with me, but I felt his style would play more to the crowd than, say, Melin's straight-ahead heavy rock shredding, especially since Europe loves a robotty bit. His scores were surprisingly low, though. Not just to me, but to everyone - we were seriously concerned for his second-round possibilities.
Moredrive, from Germany, was up next, wearing full-body fuschia and proving that another universal of air guitar is the spandex pants on men. He also had kneepads on, which... ok. First of all, Nordic does powerslides on his bare knees and leaves each competition looking like he's been in a car accident. Toughen up, buttercup. And second of all, this dude had the kneepads on and didn't even use them! What is the point, I ask you.
Denmark's Thunderflesh came up next playing what my fellow viewers assured me was Hammerfall, which excited them, and not being a metal dude I don't really know... but he did smash his guitar at the end and that was pretty fun.
The gentleman from Bulgaria had an air name - "Photo," which I'll assume translates to something cooler in Bulgarian - but since he was wearing a wrestling leotard thingy that left nothing to the imagination, I'm going to refer to him with the name coined by another air guitarist - "Bulge Area." I understand he also showed his bulge area at their karaoke night. And I thought ours was fun!
The Russian champ, Ivana Rock, brought more sheer rock fury than we'd seen for a few performers. I thought she did pretty well up until the other obligatory European thing happened. As well as loving the fade-out, they love the "suddenly I'm playing a different and much slower/less metal song!" thing. I do not love this thing. I don't know if the judges didn't love it either, or if they had other criteria in mind, but they gave her super low scores.
Ivana Rock
photo credit Maiju Torvinen
Wild Thing 37, the UK champ, did a track that included some dubstep... I'm surprised whenever I see that. You can only air guitar to a song that includes guitar in it. It just seems like handicapping yourself. But despite this and what I thought was a fairly disjointed performance, the judges loved it, and he scooted into second place, right behind Mean Melin, who was still managing to hold onto the top spot.
But then came in Inogami Koushou of Japan. Dressed in camouflage. Being a middle-aged dad. He proceeded to carefully remove his clothing (haven't they invented tear-away pants over there yet?) down to a more rockin' ensemble of tight pants and muscle shirt, and with the remaining time in his minute, knock it out of the park. He took over the first spot and bumped Melin down to second! And then Bjorn Turoque, MCing as is tradition, decided to create an international incident and made a tsunami reference.
Kazakhstan sent a competitor this year! His name was Rockin' Rabbit, and he wore a bunny suit... and produced a carrot from what we are pretty sure was his butt. In terms of his actual performance, I felt bad sitting in a chatroom where people were being kind of tough on these guys - tougher scrutiny than I felt most air guitarists in the US got - but then I had to consider that this is the World Championships. What would have been incredible at a local qualifier or even semi-final level is no longer enough to cut it. The US is lucky to have a really strong and evolved competition system, where talent filters upwards, and it's entirely possible that this structure is not in place in plenty of other countries. So someone who might have been beaten out at some earlier step in the process here is never eliminated, and he goes on and gets trash-talked by American strangers on the internet.
The Dutch competitor freaked me out because he came on wearing... body paint? A skintight shirt? Unknown - but it was intended to give him the torso of a tiger. So either he spent a lot of time painting really perfect tiger stripes onto himself, or there are shirts out there that do that. He called himself The Beast, and he was... kind of a beast at it, actually! Although if it comes down to an air guitar beast-off amongst the competitors present, I'd pick Melin all the way. In fact, even among US air guitarists only, I'd probably give him the edge in beastness.
It was now time for the final competitor of Round 1. She was the Belgian champ, Miss Issippy, and she came out wearing some 18th-century finery that led us all to try and fix her up with The Marquis. But her song got going and she tore the gown off, revealing black lace and a tutu! She was amazing, fierce, and on top of her song - and she deservedly got a great score and moved into first.
Halftime
While the top 10 (not top 5!) were calculated, we were entertained first by a dance troupe, and then by a proposal! And not an air proposal, either - a real one! She said yes and we're all very happy for everyone. And then... this song happened:
This was by way of being a response to what's going on in Russia right now with the severe anti-gay laws and persecution... but it is just glorious in and of itself. The video was projected while the singer sang it live onstage. We were all just in transports of joy, and if you watch the video, you will be too.
Time for Round 2!
Round 2
At World Championships, they take the top 10 after round 1, not the top 5. In ascending order, this was
10th: Photo aka Bulge Area
9th: AIRGUS
8th: Facemelter
7th: Thunderstroock
4th (3-way tie): Your Daddy, Nordic Thunder, Wild Thing 37
3rd: Mean Melin
2nd: Inogami Koushou
1st: Miss Issippy
That's right! All the Americans made it into the second round! Cue wild celebration and rejoicing. But now it was time to get serious. The second-round song was... hilarious. Its name is "Electric Butt," and it's by a local band called Wedding Crashers. Look it up. The first line was "Got to find a way to get my hands on your electric butt." That said, though, the actual guitary part didn't really kick in until about halfway through. So: a challenge.
Bulge Area went first and did his best, but this song was, sorry to say, more advanced than him. To deal with a tough song, you have to have a lot of tricks up your sleeve, and just being able to play solidly and straightforwardly is not going to be sufficient. Indeed it wasn't, and his scores reflected it.
Likewise AIRGUS. He hopped on an audience member's shoulders and rode around semi-aimlessly for the entire song. Now. There's nothing wrong with a shoulder ride for effect (Pops Rockswell rode audience shoulders to victory in the San Francisco Qualifier, Mathromancer in the Dark Horse, William Ocean in the annals of history). But all of these people didn't do their entire routine from piggy-back! They hopped on for effect, and spent the rest of the time on the stage, or on the bar, or on the judges' table. It loses its punch if you spend the whole minute up there, and it also loses you the ability to do anything with your lower body. The judges agreed with me, I think, and his scores were kind of in the toilet. However, in his post-performance interview with Bjorn, he had the quote of the evening in terms of why do air guitar: "Don't die like an idiot."
Facemelter was up next. He had a deficit to overcome; he had scored irrationally low in the first round and now was faced with this ridiculous butt-touching song to deal with. He brought out... THE FACE. No one can resist it. The crowd went insane. His scores were solid.
Thunderstroock took the stage, now resplendent in tiny cutoffs. I can't lie - he was a bit flaily. But his flailiness was perfect. This song demanded a certain degree of flail, and he nailed it. Huge scores, huge cheers from Team America On The Internet.
Thunderstroock (round 2)
photo credit Maiju Torvinen
Then, Your Daddy. If he wasn't already Airistotle-like enough, he did what I would define as the "Stot Hop" - a move familiar to anyone who's watched a few of his performances. I don't think he's a plagiarist, to be clear. I actually get really excited when I see someone using a move reminiscent of someone else, since it means they're a fan and they're paying attention. Unfortunately, his technical prowess was a bit missing on this performance, so he scored kind of low.
Nordic was up next. You would think that a freaky pop song about electric butt touching would not be in the wheelhouse of a long-haired, bearded man with a leather loincloth on. You would be wrong. This man is a champion for a reason, and part of that reason is his versatility (and not to stereotype, but the surprisingness of that versatility - you have to assume that judges who don't know him see him and assume he's just metal and can't do anything else). His scores slotted him in right behind Thunderstroock, who probably started getting the major goosebumps right about then - you're ahead of the defending world champion in the second round of the world championships!
Conversely, for Wild Thing 37, it didn't surprise anyone that he was fairly strong on this song. Gauging by his first round and his neon-inflected costume, this song is pretty much right in his comfort zone. Not to say he couldn't have gone outside it, but this song didn't ask him to, so he did a pretty outstanding job with it and pushed Nordic down a spot.
Mean Melin was up... and NAILED IT. He's another guy who seems like he might be a bit lost when faced with something like this, but thoroughly was not. Everywhere there was a lick, he hit it. Everywhere there was just dancy nonsense, he engaged the crowd (stone-facedly, which was hilarious). This was an interesting contrast with Thunderstroock. They each remained just like themselves. Melin stayed tough and stoic and still crushed it; Thunderstroock went flamboyant and wiggly, which was exactly what the song required, and crushed it. Melin's scores came in... and put him in a tie with Thunderstroock!
I can't have been the only person hyperventilating and saying "oh my god you guys" over and over. But I managed not to miss Japan's Inogami Koushou. He actually started with the same schtick - the military camouflage outfit which he then removed before actually playing. It gets a bit old, but at least he was doing it during the part of the song where there wasn't so much guitar... still wound up missing some parts he should've been playing, though. Scores, therefore, lowish.
Finally, Miss Issippy. A sad situation, it became clear that her strength was in a routine she got to practice. When faced with a new song, she lost the momentum that had carried her to first place. Only her high first-round scores kept her from the bottom of the heap, and she tied with Your Daddy and Koushou.
So: this meant that there was a tie for first place! Thunderstroock and Mean Melin were tied, and that can only mean one thing: time for an air-off!
The song was an edit of Weezer's "Hash Pipe." I know it's maybe not the world's best air guitar song ever, but it was such an improvement over "Electric Butt" that I got really capsy, yelling at the chatroom "OKAY! WE CAN WORK WITH THIS!" And they both could. But Thunderstroock got "stuck" - that situation where you find yourself just standing still in one place instead of moving around - and Melin just owned that stage, and he got the higher score.
Meaning...
Mean Melin is your 2013 World Air Guitar Champion!!
Here is video of all 3 of his performances - round 1, round 2, and the air-off:
So that's the 2013 season! But don't get the idea that this site goes to sleep until next spring. There will be plenty to talk about - ideas, analysis, inspiration for next year... and maybe even some fun in-between events, so keep checking back, brothAIRs and sistAIRs!
