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Bjorn Turoque - To Air is Human: One Mans Quest to Become the Worlds Greatest Air Guitarist

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Book:
To Air is Human: One Mans Quest to Become the Worlds Greatest Air Guitarist
Author:
Bjorn Turoque / Dan Crane
Publisher:
Penguin Publishing Group
Genre:
Books / Non-fiction
Year:
2006
Rating:
4 / 5
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Make Air, Not War is the personal motto of Dan Crane, the musician who decided to put his there guitar aside and reinvent himself as Bjrn Troque: the take-no-prisoners future of competitive air guitar. Jeopardizing love and livelihood to join the ruthless international circuit of the World Air Guitar Championships, Bjrn Troque (pronounced b-yorn too-RAWK) began a three-year odyssey to secure what was rightfully his (and Americas!)the air guitar world crown.
To Air is Human is the riotous tale of one mans journey through a world of wheelchair-bound Christian air rockers, spandex-jumpsuit fittings, Finnish stunt wolves, catatonic 80s guitar heroes, air groupies, Aireoke, Air Supply, dry-ice injuries, and ultimately, good vs. evil (in the form of Bjrns rival pretender to the air guitar throne). But it is also a sincere and penetrating account of the pursuit of an elusive, intangible, and perhaps nonexistent goal: to achieve airnessthat is, when air guitar transcends the real art that it imitates and becomes an art form in and of itself.
Bjrn Troque is so good that people with real guitars now have contests to see who can do the best imitation of his air guitar imitation.Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and The Tipping Point

Bjorn Turoque: author's other books

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Table of Contents

If I may paraphrase Elvis Costellowriting about air guitar is like choreography about blueprints. Bjrn Troque

For Jane Air

Authors Note:

I didnt do all this so that I could write a book about it. Hell, the book wasnt even my idea. No, I wanted to conquer air guitar for the same reason George Leigh Mallory sought to climb Mount Everest in 1924: It was there.

SOME DESCRIPTIONS OF PEOPLE
AND/OR THEIR AIR GUITARS
HAVE BEEN CHANGED IN ORDER
TO PROTECT IDENTITIES

Prologue

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetc activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxicaton.

Friedrich Nietzsche

OULU, FINLAND August 29, 2003. I am at the after-party in a large old house in the middle of the forest, crawling around on a table, drunk. Im not sure how I got here, though I vaguely recall sharing a rapidly diminishing bottle of whiskey with Zac as we stumbled through the woods. Underneath my sweater, the words Make Air, Not War are writ large on my bare chest in indelible marker. I am half singing, half mumbling, Get your hands off of my woman, mutherfu... when a guy who looks blurrily familiar taps me on the head several times. After a few seconds of tapping, I finally look up at him. He is upside down. Actually, there are two of him, upside down, telling me, Mr. Monro is about to throw up. We need to go.

I roll off the table onto the floor and stumble outside. No sign of Mr. Monro.

The next thing I know, I am inside the Grilleriina, a foul-smelling, fluorescently lit all-night Finnish hamburger stand. The walls are white and bare, and everyone is smoking. The air is a thick, juicy grease-alcohol-and-smoke sandwich. Zac Monro is there. He doesnt appear to have just thrown upin fact, he looks just fine. Hes devouring a plate of fries lathered in what might be Thousand Island dressing. Or throw-up. Its hard to tell.

Hanoi Rocks lead guitarist, Andy McCoy, and his wife, Angela (who, earlier in the evening in her role as air guitar judge, gave me a 5.9 out of a possible 6), are also there grabbing a late-night snack. They look like they just crawled out of a limo after chasing a lethal dose of heroin with a bottle of grain alcohol. Andya gristly, raisin-faced shell of a man wearing a red cowboy hat and a black scarf with white skulls on itis draped on Angelas shoulder, clinging to her like a slice of cheese melting over a burger. Angela, wearing large dark sunglasses covering most of her face, looks slightly less undead than her husband.

Angela chats it up with the patrons as I attempt to order some fries from the colossal, surly Finnish woman behind the counter.

Fun stuff tonight, slurs Angela. Former air champ right here. Hes awesome. I havent seen him, but Ive heard.

I am quite good, says Zac.

They hug.

You gotta show me. I was impressed tonight, but I was not floored.

Thats because I wasnt playing, says Zac.

Then she recognizes me. You were... she burbles. Youre... youyou were... air g uitar... Angela is rapidly losing the ability to speak in complete sentences. You... you were really sexy! I liked you. You were... She is wobbling right and left as Andy, who has apparently just awoken from a momentary coma, chimes in.

Yeah, great. Really good, he bobs, attempting to focus, then grabs me by the back of the head and pulls me to within inches of his wizened, leathery visage.

Hey! he shouts at me. He is a dragon, exhaling fiery toxins of alcohol and narcotics in my face. He pauses to slowly look me over, and then asks in a frail, gravelly voice, Are you... gypsy?

Angela interrupts. I tried, I voted for you, but that Asian g uy... he was She is suddenly distracted by a plate of food.

Andy steadies himself by wrapping his left arm around me, and then repeats, his hand pointing at me accusatorily, Are you a gypsy?

I am scrambling to figure out the right answer. Is he speaking in code? If I am a gypsy (which, to my knowledge, Im not), is that good or bad? His face is sagging, his voice agitated. Hes got a little puddle of drool hanging from the left side of his lower lip. His eyes are vacant black holes of drug-addled madness.

Cause Im gypsy, he says, flopping his right hand against his chest for emphasis. He pauses and looks deep into my eyespast my eyes, into my soulas if he is about to impart his last words, some nugget of dying rock star wisdom.

We were just in LA, yknow, he continues. The Foo Fighters... those g uys... those are nice guys. He shakes his head back and forth, recalling what nice guys the Foo Fighters were. And then he drives it home: Really nice guys.

Why Andy McCoy, lead guitarist from Hanoi Rocks, is telling me about what nice guys the Foo Fighters are, I have no idea. And who cares? Its four thirty in the morning and Im drunk, hanging out in a hamburger shack in northern Finland after the Air Guitar World Championships with an actual guitarist from a legendary eighties hair metal band.

Sure, hes drooling on me, but in my own way, I am living the dream.

One Mans Quest to Become the Worlds Greatest Air Guitarist

Part 1 :

Welcome to the Jungle

Chapter One: Bjrn Is Born

In music, as n everything, the disppearing moment of experience is the firmest reality.

Benjamin Boretz, Perspectives on Musical Aesthetics

first heard about the Air Guitar World Championships in 2002, after an Irish friend of mine named Cedric Devitt returned to New York City from Finland. He had traveled thousands of miles to a city just below the Arctic Circle, called Oulu (pronounced oh-LU), to find out what the battle for the title of Greatest Air Guitarist in the World was all about. Hes never been the same since. In Finland, he acquired the stage name Aer Lingus and entered the competition, playing to a Sebadoh song titled Brand New Love. He came in fourth place. Thats fourth place in the world. And he had never even played the air guitar. I had hardly imagined that a world of competitive air guitar even existed, but once I heard about it, I instantly understood its brilliance.

Upon his return, Lingus (as we referred to him for weeks afterwards) regaled us with tales of jam-packed bars and outdoor stadiums full of fans, mystical training rituals, late nights of inebriated iniquityand it sounded a lot like the rock star Shangri-la in which I had always imagined myself living. I envied Aer Lingus, as anyone would.

Lingus told me that he and a friend (Kriston Rucker, aka DJ Teddy Ruckspin) had gone to Finland not only to compete but also to license air rights from the Finns in order to launch competitions in the United States. Why the Finns had the exclusive on competitive air guitar was difficult to understand. Later, I found out the Finns also had the monopoly on the international sauna, wife carrying, and mobile phone tossing competitions as well.

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