h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

After many years of study in this area, I have observed an interesting and revealing difference in the male/female air guitar practice.

Men always seem to have very small air guitars and often appear to be widdling on the high frets, whereas women have extremely large guitars, resembling an oversize bass.

What this means, I will leave open to the floor.

Oversize bass? What, like a large trout?

Dman! If only I'd got here sooner I could have done that bad pun. Top work, though.

I've never seen a woman playing air guitar. All we get round here are rugby players miming to Cast songs, something I plan to make illegal. When something with good guitar in it comes on the jukebox, these same wankers start talking loudly. The only other sort of air guitar I've seen is the quasi-accurate, in which one member of a band demonstrates to the bassist what he should be playing.

I know quite a few female air guitar players. Including myself. It's just harder to catch them.

I have seen several subjects performing air guitar, and I find that the ones who also give signals to the roadies and the sound crew are by far the more evolved of the species.

Air Golden Throat is quite popular for people who forget to do air wah-wah. Ever seen any air pick-dropping-and-subsequent-retrieval?

Being a woman I too have noticed the tendancy for men to make more facial expression than most women in this venture...it could be a fact that men require more energy to play those chords higher up the imaginary fret.

I don't make faces (for which I get slagged by my bandmates for being uninteresting to look at whilst playing) but I do click my tongue involuntarily. It's annoying, but the best air guitarists tend to be those that don't play - people that do play will strive for accuracy and will therefore be rather visually inactive whereas those who only see guitar "playing" on top of the pops resemble someone gutting a moose.

Obviously, the male air guitarists are working the same theory as MTV... faster is better, get a look, then hammer it 77 times per second.

The female air guitarists on the other hand are working the emotional side... it's not how it looks, it's how it feels.

Note toprevious reply: Imagine the horror of gutting a moose and dropping your pick...

I'll only imagine that if it becomes absolutely necessary.
Does anyone tweak the knobs higher and higher on an air amp? It would obviously need to be someone playing air lead guitar rather than rhythm. Maybe air-flouncing-off-in-a-huff because other people are air-shouting "stop posing and write a decent tune". Given the success of all these standing-still-statues at the last Edinburgh Festival, next year I plan to exhibit a piece of physical theatre whereby popular music of the current time is represented by facial expression and vegetables. For example: Ocean Colour Scene are a cabbage and a wet lettuce, held in the hands whilst the arms droop limply to that the knuckles scrape the ground, coupled with an expression of incredulity. Faithless are a hollowed-out yet polished cucumber, Steps could be five pieces of celery attached by string to a single stick, Britney Spiers would be a GM tomato, Travis would be a soft, rotting cauliflower and Goldie an empty piece of the astroturf on which greengroceries are displayed - I forget the Liff name for such stuff.
Maybe that's what all these people in clubs are doing with their hands - playing air midi-sampler or something. Air-Cubase. Air-Pro-Tools.

There is a new generation of quasi-accurate air guitarists - those who actually play real (shock) guitars, and though they would normally not be caught dead playing air guitar, the alcohol has made them do what they would otherwise deem unsuitable. The most notable point is that they are actually playing the correct chords, and are at about the right place on the fretboard. You could actually slip a guitar through their arms and it would sound right. Shocking.

I've had the pleasure to see an air-DJ at work.

I've had the pleasure to see an air-DJ at work.

Hmm, an interesting concept. What would Black Sabbath be represented by? Perhaps some overtly sized aubergines held at arms length above the head with a dark and menacing expression on ones face.

Boyzone would no doubt be represented by 5 blighted potatoes in a small heap being crushed by a happy faced gentleman.

If you were at the Reading festival in '99, The Offspring brought a number of mannequins, representing a certain well known boy band, up onto stage, announced them, and then proceeded to batter them furiously with a baseball bat.

Absolutely crowd-thrilling stuff.