articles
DVD Review: Air Guitar Nation
from volume 02 issue 05 // Aubrey Bramble
DVD Review
Words: Aubrey Bramble
Air Guitar Nation:
Director: Alexandra Lipsitz
Air guitar for world peace? That's the theory behind the Air Guitar World Championships, happening every September In Oulu, Finland for the past eleven years. AGWC founder Jukka Takalo, along with Kriston Rucker and Cedric Devitt - co-founders of the U.S. AIr Guitar Championships - want you to know that air guitar is not a joke. Well, it is a joke, but it's a dead serious one. One that they hope will inspire millions to "make air, not war." Guitar Hero aficionados take note.
Air Guitar Nation follows the 2003 East Coast American air guitar champion, David "C. Diddy" Jung as he prepares for the U.S. Championships in LA. Fellow East Coast competitor and all-around dark horse of the homeland air guitar circuit, Dan "Bjorn Turoque" Crane (the possible long lost twin of REAX's own Shawn Kyle), rabidly trails Jung on his cross-country quest to obtain the national title, talking smack and begging for camera time the entire way. Not unlike an annoying younger brother, Crane then follows Jung all the way across the Atlantic to the World Championships in Oulu, where the real action takes place.
What's important about this documentary is simple. 2003 marked the very first year America competed in the Air Guitar World Championships. It sounds like an error I know, what with us staking claim on the origins of rock 'n' roll and air guitar solos, but it's the truth. Perhaps this seven year absence was our way of giving the rest of the world a head start.
Although this DVD is far from Masterpiece Theatre, it is intensely amusing, attention-grabbing, and well-produced. I don't care how mature, high-brow, or cultured you take yourself to be. There is no way you can sit through this and not crack a smile. The contestants alone, in their homemade spangly stage costumes and - sometimes - nothing at all, take "airness" to a level you've never seen, not even in your wildest Eddie Van Halen dreams.
Visit www.airguitarnation.com to find out more about the film, and check out www.airguitarworldchampionships.com if you're thinking about competing in 2008.
Words: Aubrey Bramble
Air Guitar Nation:
Director: Alexandra Lipsitz
Air guitar for world peace? That's the theory behind the Air Guitar World Championships, happening every September In Oulu, Finland for the past eleven years. AGWC founder Jukka Takalo, along with Kriston Rucker and Cedric Devitt - co-founders of the U.S. AIr Guitar Championships - want you to know that air guitar is not a joke. Well, it is a joke, but it's a dead serious one. One that they hope will inspire millions to "make air, not war." Guitar Hero aficionados take note.
Air Guitar Nation follows the 2003 East Coast American air guitar champion, David "C. Diddy" Jung as he prepares for the U.S. Championships in LA. Fellow East Coast competitor and all-around dark horse of the homeland air guitar circuit, Dan "Bjorn Turoque" Crane (the possible long lost twin of REAX's own Shawn Kyle), rabidly trails Jung on his cross-country quest to obtain the national title, talking smack and begging for camera time the entire way. Not unlike an annoying younger brother, Crane then follows Jung all the way across the Atlantic to the World Championships in Oulu, where the real action takes place.
What's important about this documentary is simple. 2003 marked the very first year America competed in the Air Guitar World Championships. It sounds like an error I know, what with us staking claim on the origins of rock 'n' roll and air guitar solos, but it's the truth. Perhaps this seven year absence was our way of giving the rest of the world a head start.
Although this DVD is far from Masterpiece Theatre, it is intensely amusing, attention-grabbing, and well-produced. I don't care how mature, high-brow, or cultured you take yourself to be. There is no way you can sit through this and not crack a smile. The contestants alone, in their homemade spangly stage costumes and - sometimes - nothing at all, take "airness" to a level you've never seen, not even in your wildest Eddie Van Halen dreams.
Visit www.airguitarnation.com to find out more about the film, and check out www.airguitarworldchampionships.com if you're thinking about competing in 2008.
Add a comment...
more from this issue
