Boston Air Guitar Blog

Despite a long hiatus, I would like to continue providing a platform for women in competitive air guitar to share their stories. I hope that I can showcase more such posts in the future and that we keep looking at solutions together.

As promised, I'll be publishing some thoughts from other women in competitive air guitar over the next little while. Some of these women are choosing to be anonymous, while others are using their names. Please know that this is not intended to beat anyone over the head with these stories - rather, the purpose of the series is to flesh out the experiences that we have had so as to give a fuller picture, and to show how pervasive and widespread these similar experiences are.

Like many women involved in competitive air guitar, there's been something on my mind for ages. Years, really. And it came to a head at the National Finals this year, when an argument broke out between the judging table and a competitor about how judges talk about the women they are judging. Most of what I've had in mind was there for a long time, simmering and making me grit my teeth or roll my eyes or just confusing me to death. But having spoken with a few other ladies, I'm going to branch out a little.

It's what you might call "Dark Horse season" - the season where we're bearing down on the big US Air Guitar Nationals weekend, and everyone who hasn't already qualified for the national finals is itching to know whether they were invited to the Dark Horse invitational competition. For the uninitiated, this is a "best of the rest" type thing, where people who didn't already win their way into the finals to get another shot - the top 3 or 5 air guitarists at the Dark Horse then get into the finals. The competitors are selected by the USAG brass, based on their performances this year.

Exciting times are upon us! The 2014 US Air Guitar Season is beginning in earnest. Most, if not all, of the qualifiers are booked, and the Kansas City and Brooklyn qualifiers have been officially announced. Some things are different since last year, though - I think some of the changes from last year are still being hashed out, balanced, and tested. Whether the latest round of changes are a success will be up to this season to prove.

In my last post, I compared Olympic sports to facets of competitive air guitar. Today, I'd like to add an appendix to that list to show you an Olympic athlete incorporating air guitar into his performance on the ice!