What's that? "Recap" and not "second-hand recap"? Well, I wasn't technically there, but they had the livestream running so apart from the first few air guitarists, who were outrageously blurry (like, indistinct gobs of light level of blurry), I was able to see the whole thing!
And boy was it a whole thing. They had 21 competitors! If this was a preview of what Nationals are going to be like when they take place there in August, Kansas City has proven without a doubt that they can pull it off. The evening was hosted by 2013 World Champion Mean Melin, who seemed so excited to be there that you wouldn't know this wasn't the national finals. That's what I like to see - every air guitar competition should be contested at that level of intensity and bring that level of enthusiasm.
The competitors were a mixture of veterans and new competitors, and in a counterpoint to Brooklyn's qualifier, newbies weren't shut out of the second round. So this could mean that my doomsaying prophecies about how last year was an outlier with its scads of new people doing well at qualifiers (due to veterans often having a pass to the semi-finals) were wrong. But, again, this is one piece of data in this direction, as Brooklyn was one piece of data in the opposite direction. Still withholding judgment.
They had first-timers, walk-ons (and essentially-walk-ons), and even someone who hadn't had anything to drink at all. She got straight 4.9s for her trouble, by the way, and let that be a lesson to you. There was even a terrifying clown named "BOB." And for some reason there were a lot of fade-outs. (What is this, Europe?) The highlights:
- Glory Wholesome, with a little Zeppelin for the people - I really want to see her compete again for a wider audience. I don't think people who weren't at previous Kansas City competitions knew how good she was until watching the livestream.
- Freddy Fingers had a false start. False starts are suddenly a trend in qualifiers.
- Stack Attack started out with that ubiquitous song from that kids' movie Frozen (which aggravates me, because there's a much better not-for-kids movie also called Frozen, and now everyone will think I'm talking about the kids' movie), but segued quickly into shredding.
- There was even a metal rickroll by newcomer Velocirapture. It's exactly what you think it is.
- American hero Peter "Stiff" Dickens played it straighter than usual - more playing and less stretching the boundaries of air guitar - and wore shorts, and one of these 2 things kept him out of the second round, or maybe a combination of the both.
- There was a librarian who competed as Dewey Decibel. She had the number 781.66 emblazoned on her shirt, which is the number for rock and roll. Perfect.
- But most of all, the best and most heartwarming story of the night was The CorpAIRation, who had badly injured his leg only a few days before, and had considered not competing this year. Fortunately, peer pressure prevailed, and he was convinced to pull a Tommy Fretless 2010 move and perform from a chair, his leg in a cast.
The CorpAIRation
photo by @drnik46 on Twitter
That performance, along with Dewey Decibel's, made the second round; so did both Thunderball and Sonic Bitch, who both crushed it despite having an infant at home and probably not getting a ton of sleep, last year's St. Louis victor CindAIRella (new name, same rocker), the pig-masked nightmare fuel of Pork Sword, and of course, our Lord and SaviAIR Himself, Air Jesus. He walked in through a crowd holding lit candles, which makes me wonder if Kansas City is like New Hampshire and just has no laws at all. Imagine trying to wave a bunch of open flames around in a bar here. Cold Steel Renegade nearly got kicked out of the House of Blues in LA last year just for sparklers. So basically Kansas City is one step away from monkey knife fights.
Air Jesus victorious
photo credit Jennifer Dobnikar
The second round format was essentially like a Yankee Swap. You picked a song from the hat, and could either play that, or "steal" and play the song someone else before you had picked.This worked out amazingly in Thunderball's favor since he wound up with Andrew WK and came up from the bottom of the second round to finish 4th.
The victor was Air Jesus - but he abdicated the crown since he'll be out of the country during the semi-finals. Second place was CindAIRella, third was CorpAIRation. They'll move up to first and second, and both go on to the semis, and stepping into the now-vacant third semi-final spot is Thunderball! They'll all compete in Chicago on June 13th.
Last-minute update!! The livestream was actually recorded, and there are links to watch it yourself in the US Air Guitar recap of the event! If you didn't watch it live, do your life a favour and watch it now (or, like, at home later. I assume you probably have a job and they frown on spending 3 hours watching air guitar in the middle of the day).