A sleepy Scandinavian town is awakened by rock gods of the Marcel Marceau variety for the World Air Guitar Championships. Stephanie Bunbury reports.
The town of Oulu, in northern Finland, produces tar, paper pulp and herrings. Its great pride is its pedestrian mall. But Oulu, pop. 120,000, is also the heartland of the power chord: it is to Scandinavian heavy metal what Tamworth is to Australian country music. And it is here, among the leafy silver birches, that the Seventh World Air Guitar Championship takes place. Oulu rocks.
The contest started as a novelty evening during a festival of Finnish music videos. Six years on, the air guitar is the big thing. "There are as many ways of playing air guitar as there are of falling in love with a beautiful woman," explains defending champion Zac Monro.
After talking to Monro, an architect from London, I think he is a bit crackers. "We are lucky enough to have stumbled across something that is the last remaining pure art form," he says. "It's pure because it's an abstract and an abstract is a pure thing. Because its only visible effect is on its surroundings; you can't actually see it. You can't package it or sell it."
Oikku Ylinen, who won the first competition in 1996, is short (for a Finn) and fat on beer; his hair is dyed a vivid rose pink and tied back with a bandanna to feature hooped gypsy earrings. Ylinen is a sound technician. He comes from a very small town; in Finland, small towns seem to encourage the flourishing of weirdness.
It's a Wednesday night, two days before the competition starts, and Ylinen and Monro have been enlisted to drill the 15 contestants on the finer points of air guitar. It's Ylinen, more than Monro, who makes playing the air guitar seem a solid, serious thing. When it's his turn, he sticks a fag in his mouth - it is his only real accessory, but clearly essential - and an invisible guitar seems to materialise in his hands. He plays it low, he plays it high, between his knees, behind his head, even tips his head back and plays it with his teeth. Everyone is transfixed; that guitar really seems to exist.
But the guitar is only the half of it. In performance Ylinen turns into a rock god. "Play to the women," he instructs a pukka English contestant, Jack Malvern, tilting the imaginary guitar at a suggestive angle towards the nearest candidate. Malvern looks uncomfortable. So, is sex is an important part of air guitar? "Very important," says Ylinen. Does he have groupies? I ask hopefully. He waves a hand, as if farewelling a bevy of them, and flickers a smile. "Those days are over," he says.
"Super" Dave Williams, a student, is the Australian contestant. He won the national titles in February (readers may recall when the Herald's Sacha Molitorisz competed in the heats at Penrith Panthers) and a trip to Finland. Williams, 25, also has a contract with KFC.
Monro is dismayed by this revelation; everyone is. As days go by, the KFC contract becomes an ever hotter and greasier rumour. Nobody wants to accept it; even on the last night, Matthew Pioro from Toronto, a self-styled nerd who has worn an ironic plaid shirt throughout the competition, is whispering to me about the terrible calumny on Super Dave. No, I say, it's true. He is the voice of the Zinger burger. Pioro stares at me, irony withered away.
"I find that really sad," he says eventually.
The funny thing, of course, is that it's not a bit sad for Williams himself. One minute he's an industrial design student on a year off, hoping to make enough money to go overseas; next he's exploding into his 15 minutes. Air guitar, he says, has given him the best time of his life. That is what it's about: a good time. "It's not artistic, but it sells beer and puts bums on seats: it's a variety act," he says.
"I don't think anyone goes for a sensitive interpretation of the music; you go for a laugh. And while you can say you have to respect the world championships - maybe it's because I'm Australian - but I think you can't take yourself too seriously."
The Riverview old boy is doing a Motley Crue number, Kickstart my Heart. He has a monumental wig, velvet strides, silver stack-heeled boots and shades - the complete cabaret version of glam metal. But his ironic pose isn't going to cut it in Finland. By day two, he has realised as much and a bit of the shine goes off him. "In Australia, I knew what the judges were looking for," he says. "It was entertainment value. Here it's different: they want to keep it sincere and pure. Which is good, too, but ..." But not what he was expecting. And he can't change now; he has been to all the press conferences in glitter drag.
On the day of the final, the deputy mayor throws a reception in one of the banqueting halls of Oulu's Town Hall. And then it's the big night. Everyone has to "play" a minute of a track of their choice, then a minute of what is, at the moment, a mystery track. There are 12 finalists, five of them champions; the rookies play first. First up is Arttu Kurttila, 18, a local lad playing AC-DC.
Kurttila is really too young to play metal with conviction; to get away with it, you should look as if you've nearly drowned in someone else's vomit at least once in your life. But most of the audience at the front, who look as if they're in Hanson, keep screaming for their mate. He eventually acknowledges them by pulling his pants down. In the press enclosure next to the stage, I look up from my notes to be greeted by his scrotum. And his mother is watching: bummer.
The variety of chosen tracks is surprising. The most requested song in Finland, the compere notes, is Black Sabbath's Paranoid, chosen by one of the Austrians. Norwegian champion Erik Saether selects Detroit Rock City by Kiss. The rest of the songs run from Lenny Kravitz to Los Lobos, played Mexicana-style by the Austrian champ, Ernst Preininger. The scoring by the two judges is instant. Andrew Buckles, an earnest environmental consultant from Halifax, in Canada, shares top spot with Toby Peneha, the 28-year-old Kiwi champion. Only now do they hear the compulsory track: Last Nite by the Strokes.
Monro, as reigning champion, has the last slot in the first round. On his chosen track, White Stripes' Fell in Love with a Girl, he seems half-hearted. Yet on his second appearance he is dynamite. You can't imagine where this passion has come from. And he wins again. For the second year in a row, he gets to take home the prize - a handmade Flying Finn guitar. Peneha and Buckles share second place.
"What happened to Dave?" says one of the guys from a Canadian camera crew. "In the club the other night he was just awesome. And tonight ..." He trails off.
It is true: Super Dave Williams, out of step with the rest in his glam-rock costume, was comparatively lacklustre. His off night was compounded by the sound system's failure just as he was due to start and, although he held the crowd for five minutes in a great display of showmanship in the audience's second language, the technical hitch can't have helped.
"I was robbed," he says, grinning brazenly. "I could be bitter. You don't want to get on the plane back to Australia with me: I'll be nasty!" And tonight? "I'm a bad loser. I'm going to smash at least one air guitar over [Monro's] head."
Then he lets the act drop. Of course it is disappointing not to win, he says, but he's been beaten by a champion.
"I think he's classy. He's a good ambassador for air guitar as the Finns see it: they admire the hippie nature of it." Peneha, who looked crestfallen when he was called to second place, is smiling now; he has won the audience award, polled in truly modern style with a tally of text messages.
"I'm the most popular and I'm happy with that," he says. "And I got up on the podium, man, that's the best!"
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The town of Oulu, in northern Finland, produces tar, paper pulp and herrings. Its great pride is its pedestrian mall. But Oulu, pop. 120,000, is also the heartland of the power chord: it is to Scandinavian heavy metal what Tamworth is to Australian country music. And it is here, among the leafy silver birches, that the Seventh World Air Guitar Championship takes place. Oulu rocks.
The contest started as a novelty evening during a festival of Finnish music videos. Six years on, the air guitar is the big thing. "There are as many ways of playing air guitar as there are of falling in love with a beautiful woman," explains defending champion Zac Monro.
After talking to Monro, an architect from London, I think he is a bit crackers. "We are lucky enough to have stumbled across something that is the last remaining pure art form," he says. "It's pure because it's an abstract and an abstract is a pure thing. Because its only visible effect is on its surroundings; you can't actually see it. You can't package it or sell it."
Oikku Ylinen, who won the first competition in 1996, is short (for a Finn) and fat on beer; his hair is dyed a vivid rose pink and tied back with a bandanna to feature hooped gypsy earrings. Ylinen is a sound technician. He comes from a very small town; in Finland, small towns seem to encourage the flourishing of weirdness.
It's a Wednesday night, two days before the competition starts, and Ylinen and Monro have been enlisted to drill the 15 contestants on the finer points of air guitar. It's Ylinen, more than Monro, who makes playing the air guitar seem a solid, serious thing. When it's his turn, he sticks a fag in his mouth - it is his only real accessory, but clearly essential - and an invisible guitar seems to materialise in his hands. He plays it low, he plays it high, between his knees, behind his head, even tips his head back and plays it with his teeth. Everyone is transfixed; that guitar really seems to exist.
But the guitar is only the half of it. In performance Ylinen turns into a rock god. "Play to the women," he instructs a pukka English contestant, Jack Malvern, tilting the imaginary guitar at a suggestive angle towards the nearest candidate. Malvern looks uncomfortable. So, is sex is an important part of air guitar? "Very important," says Ylinen. Does he have groupies? I ask hopefully. He waves a hand, as if farewelling a bevy of them, and flickers a smile. "Those days are over," he says.
"Super" Dave Williams, a student, is the Australian contestant. He won the national titles in February (readers may recall when the Herald's Sacha Molitorisz competed in the heats at Penrith Panthers) and a trip to Finland. Williams, 25, also has a contract with KFC.
Monro is dismayed by this revelation; everyone is. As days go by, the KFC contract becomes an ever hotter and greasier rumour. Nobody wants to accept it; even on the last night, Matthew Pioro from Toronto, a self-styled nerd who has worn an ironic plaid shirt throughout the competition, is whispering to me about the terrible calumny on Super Dave. No, I say, it's true. He is the voice of the Zinger burger. Pioro stares at me, irony withered away.
"I find that really sad," he says eventually.
The funny thing, of course, is that it's not a bit sad for Williams himself. One minute he's an industrial design student on a year off, hoping to make enough money to go overseas; next he's exploding into his 15 minutes. Air guitar, he says, has given him the best time of his life. That is what it's about: a good time. "It's not artistic, but it sells beer and puts bums on seats: it's a variety act," he says.
"I don't think anyone goes for a sensitive interpretation of the music; you go for a laugh. And while you can say you have to respect the world championships - maybe it's because I'm Australian - but I think you can't take yourself too seriously."
The Riverview old boy is doing a Motley Crue number, Kickstart my Heart. He has a monumental wig, velvet strides, silver stack-heeled boots and shades - the complete cabaret version of glam metal. But his ironic pose isn't going to cut it in Finland. By day two, he has realised as much and a bit of the shine goes off him. "In Australia, I knew what the judges were looking for," he says. "It was entertainment value. Here it's different: they want to keep it sincere and pure. Which is good, too, but ..." But not what he was expecting. And he can't change now; he has been to all the press conferences in glitter drag.
On the day of the final, the deputy mayor throws a reception in one of the banqueting halls of Oulu's Town Hall. And then it's the big night. Everyone has to "play" a minute of a track of their choice, then a minute of what is, at the moment, a mystery track. There are 12 finalists, five of them champions; the rookies play first. First up is Arttu Kurttila, 18, a local lad playing AC-DC.
Kurttila is really too young to play metal with conviction; to get away with it, you should look as if you've nearly drowned in someone else's vomit at least once in your life. But most of the audience at the front, who look as if they're in Hanson, keep screaming for their mate. He eventually acknowledges them by pulling his pants down. In the press enclosure next to the stage, I look up from my notes to be greeted by his scrotum. And his mother is watching: bummer.
The variety of chosen tracks is surprising. The most requested song in Finland, the compere notes, is Black Sabbath's Paranoid, chosen by one of the Austrians. Norwegian champion Erik Saether selects Detroit Rock City by Kiss. The rest of the songs run from Lenny Kravitz to Los Lobos, played Mexicana-style by the Austrian champ, Ernst Preininger. The scoring by the two judges is instant. Andrew Buckles, an earnest environmental consultant from Halifax, in Canada, shares top spot with Toby Peneha, the 28-year-old Kiwi champion. Only now do they hear the compulsory track: Last Nite by the Strokes.
Monro, as reigning champion, has the last slot in the first round. On his chosen track, White Stripes' Fell in Love with a Girl, he seems half-hearted. Yet on his second appearance he is dynamite. You can't imagine where this passion has come from. And he wins again. For the second year in a row, he gets to take home the prize - a handmade Flying Finn guitar. Peneha and Buckles share second place.
"What happened to Dave?" says one of the guys from a Canadian camera crew. "In the club the other night he was just awesome. And tonight ..." He trails off.
It is true: Super Dave Williams, out of step with the rest in his glam-rock costume, was comparatively lacklustre. His off night was compounded by the sound system's failure just as he was due to start and, although he held the crowd for five minutes in a great display of showmanship in the audience's second language, the technical hitch can't have helped.
"I was robbed," he says, grinning brazenly. "I could be bitter. You don't want to get on the plane back to Australia with me: I'll be nasty!" And tonight? "I'm a bad loser. I'm going to smash at least one air guitar over [Monro's] head."
Then he lets the act drop. Of course it is disappointing not to win, he says, but he's been beaten by a champion.
"I think he's classy. He's a good ambassador for air guitar as the Finns see it: they admire the hippie nature of it." Peneha, who looked crestfallen when he was called to second place, is smiling now; he has won the audience award, polled in truly modern style with a tally of text messages.
"I'm the most popular and I'm happy with that," he says. "And I got up on the podium, man, that's the best!"
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