Boston Air Guitar Blog

The last semi-final of the 2014 US Air Guitar season has now taken place! The road is clear to Nationals! And the last semifinal in question was the Southeast one, in DC, which is apparently always totally mindblowing. I'm smelling a campaign to get Nationals there soon... but before we go off on a Nationals-tangent, let's talk about what happened Saturday night!

Philadelphia has now closed out the US Air Guitar qualifier season. This means that the last semifinal, the Southeast semi that Philly feeds into, is the last one before National Finals in Kansas City. It also means excitement has amped up another notch.

Another semifinal is in the books, ladies and gentlemen. On Saturday night, the famed Troubadour in LA was host to the US Air Guitar Southwest Semifinal, meaning there's only one more semi to go before Nationals. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. We need to talk about what happened in LA!

The third semi-final of the 2014 US Air Guitar Season has just taken place in San Francisco! Look, ok, I don't think of San Francisco as the Northwest either, but I don't make the rules or name the names. This semifinal brought together the top 3 air guitarists of the San Francisco, Portland, and Santa Cruz qualifiers - which would make it the smallest semi with only 3 qualifiers feeding into it, except that no one from Detroit showed up to the Chicago semifinal. But big things come in small packages sometimes. This was an intense battle!

Nashville's US Air Guitar Qualifier took place before the Northeast Semifinal, but let's be honest, I wasn't there in person, so I wrote the in-person recap of the NYC semis first. That's life. Now you get to learn about Nashville.

The DC qualifier - probably the only thing both sides of the aisle can agree on nowadays - took place like 2 weeks ago and I never said anything about it! I am hanging my head in hardcore shame! Please accept my apologies as I regale you with tales of beer, very small fires, and wrestling. And, you know, air guitar.

The same night as Portland's, San Francisco put on their Qualifier! The west coast was basically throbbing with air guitar fury. It looked like this took place in the world's most well-lit bar, but other photos told a different tale. One thing that was confirmed by everyone was that it didn't matter what the lighting was like since all anyone could see was underwear. A veritable maelstrom of panties. That's right. Allow me to explain.

This qualifier brought in creative features from various different events around the country. One being, of course, the "Panty Bonus." The audience was given a big pile of underwear to throw at the contestants to show approval, and getting high numbers of undies chucked at you could improve your score. They also used the opening battle royale concept to choose the order of competitors, rather than just plain old picking numbers - a group of competitors went onstage at the same time, played the same mystery song together, and whoever was best got a more favorable, i.e. later, spot in the order. They also did the new classic "everyone gets their own song" second round tactic.

Portland seems like the kind of city that would intrinsically appreciate something like an air guitar competition. Isn't the whole schtick of the place that everyone there has some really weirdly specific talent? At any rate, they lived up to their reputation. Talent ahoy, my friends.

The first semi-final of the 2014 US Air Guitar season has taken place! The Midwest Semifinal pulled in the top 3 air guitarists from the qualifiers in Kansas City, Des Moines, Chicago, and Detroit. Surprising no one, the midwest is always a force (it's not for nothing that the current reigning World Champion, Mean Melin, hails from Kansas City). The general consensus among spectators and participants was that this semi-final was basically a "mini Nationals" with regard to the level of talent and excitement!