My Life as an Air-Guitarist - Chapter One: Tuning Up
I love the way he's hamming it up for the camera. A real performer. Although I must say, when it comes to bringing a physical prop into an air-guitar routine, my preference is definitely toward the tennis racquet.
I like the way the head of the racquet naturally replicates the body of a guitar. Its nylon strings lend to a more authentic feel of actual guitar strings, allowing for a little more pick action on those intricate solos when I'm really trying to sell it. The handle is just long enough that going from a high to low note looks natural without the excess length of a broom handle, which poses the risk of knocking something over if I throw in a 360 spin —a definite possibility depending on the musical selection.
I also find the soft bristles of the broom don't provide enough support against the hip. They're sort of whispy and kind of just slide off the leg or fold up.
This is especially troublesome if one were to reach back for one of those "cock-rock" poses, where you prop the body end of the guitar off your thigh, and thrust it straight into the air as if to say to the crowd, "my genitalia is as large as this axe I wield!" as they praise you from below the imaginary stage you're absolutely rocking.
But, even with its limitations, the broom in this photo is serving an important purpose. It — like any other prop — is acting as the training wheels of an apprenticing air-guitarist.
Air-guitaring is a confusing art form for many. In the exact moment the volume is cranked and produces feelings of exhilaration and musical domination for the performer, it can also turn that person into the butt of a joke, an unfortunate social media post, or being sentenced to sleeping on the couch. Balancing between these canyons without falling into one or the other takes skill, concentration, experience, and a keen sense of being able to accurately read the room and your audience, no matter how small it may be. Offering yourself up to an interpretative six-string dance to a rock-n-roll masterpiece can look as corny as it sounds. So if you're going to give it a go, you must be sure of one thing, and that is, you must be fucking good at it. And the only way to ensure that is to practice.
So before an air-guitarist hangs him or herself out to dry in front of an audience hoarding a closet full of lifetime embarrassments they can't wait to shed themselves of by pointing a laughing-stock finger in the direction of some air-guitar moves you haven't quite mastered, it takes hours, weeks, possibly years of practice with a prop to get the feel correct and perfect the craft. Both hands need to be on a similar plane. You can't play it too high like you're breastfeeding the guitar. And no closed fists. You're not punching anyone, you're playing the damn guitar. And those are just a few of the common crimes a novice air-guitarist will find themselves committing if they try to take their show on the road too soon.
And finding your prop is a coming-of-age rite of passage. Every accomplished air guitarist starts out with some sort of prop and will typically keep it in their arsenal and go back to it from time to time. As I mentioned, mine was the tennis racquet.
As validated in the photo above, I was not shy about my air-guitaring starting at a young age. I mean, look at me. I'm shredding in a crowded kitchen during what was likely dinner time, with my fly down. That's some serious rock-n-roll.
Perhaps I was seeking attention as the youngest in a family of five children, a dog, three cats, and a couple rabbits. Maybe I was just born to rock-n-roll. In either case, there was always music on in our house and always a tennis racquet within reach. What better way to pass the time?
I had my prop, a built-in audience, and at this young age, I started honing my chops, preparing for a bigger stage when I would titillate crowds with nothing more than the orchestral precision of my phalanges.
My air-guitar repertoire in those early years was made up of songs from my older brother's and sisters' record collections. In addition to taking influence from their musical tastes, I would also watch how they grooved to the music and pick up bits and pieces to add to my routine. Here's a classic scene you'd commonly come across in our home; my brother Doug, strumming away in our Dover house around 1984.
As the innocence of youth gave way to the self-consciousness of pre-teen years, so too did my confidence in air-guitaring in public. Insecurity was always lingering in the background of every solo. For fear of being judged, most of my playing started to occur behind closed doors.
The thought of getting caught was mortifying. Worse than getting caught masturbating. At least I assumed. But, honestly, I can't say for sure because I've never been caught masturbating. At least not that I know of. Who knows, maybe I have and no one told me. Oh, who am I kidding? I had no time to masturbate. I was too busy playing air-guitar.
But do something enough and eventually, you'll get caught. Even as my confidence began to resurface in my later teens, I remember one embarrassing instance in particular. I was wailing away to Jane's Addiction on my air-guitar in our family room in Norwell around 1990 when, to my horror, I looked up and saw my best friend Dan standing in the doorway, smiling ear to ear, knowing he had just bagged me air-guitaring the solo to "Trip Away" for a good 10 or 15 seconds before I noticed.
See, it's one thing to get caught listening to tunes, bobbing your head a little, maybe strumming an imaginary guitar, versus having a foot up on the coffee table as if it were the "front of house" monitor, striking poses and contorting your face with every bending note. I was the latter. Even if you're willing to take a dramatic performance to the extremity I was on that occasion, it's much more acceptable to do that in the public eye when you're aware you're being watched. Getting bagged when you think you're in the privacy of your home or bedroom just sucks, and there isn't a rock big enough in Stonehenge to crawl under when it happens. But Dan and I had been through a lot. There was no need to explain myself, and after the initial shock wore off, we had a good laugh. That moment made me start to feel more secure about my love for air-guitar and less self-conscious about who caught me or the circumstances under which I was caught.
Having lived through that experience, my advice for air-guitarists of any age striving to hone their craft is — Be secure, and find your prop.
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