EXCELLENT! THE AIR GUITAR WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS
LOST CHORDS
I DON’T know about you, but sometimes if I trip on a crack in the pavement I act like it’s no big thing. I just break into a jog and don’t stop until I’m in a new city with a new life, a new identity, a new Facebook account.
So once on a trip to Finland when I was forced to crawl to my log cabin – just because I’d slipped on black ice and couldn’t get a grip with my shoes – you can guess how I felt. It was the first time I’d crawled to a hotel room when stone cold sober. In the depths of an Arctic winter I’d taken a wrong turn down a slight incline. Forced to retrace my footsteps I found that standing upright was out of the question because of the Titanic amount of ice. The only way to proceed was on my knees. It was only a few metres, but in temperatures of minus 35 degrees all movement, apart from sliding, is difficult.
Nonetheless, I love Finland, I love that cracking cold – and a six-dog-open-sleigh is the only way to travel through snowcovered birch forests and across the tundra. But summer in Finland has its attractions too, not least the annual Air Guitar World Championships (AGWC). This esoteric festival will take place on August 24 in the city of Oulu on the fringes of the great Arctic wilderness.
If you fancy your chances, you’d better get cracking – the international AGWC Network will start the search for air guitar finalists next month, July 2 to be precise.
Just in case you’re wondering what an air guitarist (think Bill & Ted) actually does, the answer is – nothing, except pose and mime to rock music.
Many of today’s top air guitarists have graduated from tennis rackets to air guitars, and today there are even whole air bands – the air guitarists being joined by air drummers and air bassists. To the best of my knowledge there are no air Irish traditional folk bands, which is a pity. I’m a reasonably good air uilleann piper and would have been happy to throw my considerable air skill into such a venture.
In the meantime, should you be considering a journey to Oulu, you’ll need to go on an AGWC ‘airientation course’, and learn the rules. These include:
Air guitars must be invisible, ie: not made of anything but air; ÷Air electric or air acoustic guitars are both acceptable. An air guitarist can use either or both during a performance; ÷Plectrums (non-air types) can be used as props; ÷Personal air guitar roadies are allowed, and are permitted to help with tuning or if an air string breaks.
Even if you don’t win, you can always head back to your hotel room and throw an imaginary TV out the window.
BAD AIR DAY
TWO of Airbus’s flagship A380 superjumbos are for the scrap heap.
The aircraft, costing around €400 million new, are now parked in the foothills of the French Pyrenees. If nobody offers a decent price for them, they’ll be broken up and sold for parts.
It’s an inglorious end to the behemoths of the air only a dec- ade after they entered service. It seems that demand for a plane capable of carrying some 850 passengers was limited.
This column believes, however, that a market might be available. Airline economy class seats of the last century were akin to today’s business class.
Aside from ample legroom, the seats themselves were so comfortably upholstered that magazines such as Melody Maker or NME would carry adverts offering Boeing 707 seats or the like for sale. Bands, or indeed anyone spending a long time in a Transit van, would cherish an aircraft seat. Today on a budget flight you’d gladly settle for the space offered by the back of a Transit van, never mind one
of its seats.
WING AND A PRAYER
‘WE’RE sick and tired of the Mandelas. We are here to tell people to stand up and say this land belongs to us.’ Sick and tired of the Mandelas? An unlikely phrase, you might have thought, to be uttered by indigenous black people in South Africa. But that’s the viewpoint of the Khoi tribe of southern Africa. They want Cape Town airport to be named after Krotoa, a revered 17th century tribal heroine. But others want the honour to go to Winnie Madikizela Mandela. Controversy over the naming of airports in Ireland has been rela- tively limited; George Best Airport in Belfast and the Horan International Airport at Knock, now renamed Ireland West Airport, all went through without undue fuss.
In the unlikely event of your ever needing to know, Tirana’s international airport is called Mother Teresa – Airport Nënë Tereza in the local argot. Albania is believed to be the only predominantly Muslim country with a Catholic saint enshrined in the main transport hub.
But then Mother Teresa was a force of nature. Mind you, she had her critics – ranging from prominent atheist writers such as Christopher Hitchens to powerful figures within the Church.
The late Gerry Anderson, that exemplary BBC Radio Ulster presenter, once said: ‘All you need to know about Northern Ireland is that Mother Teresa was given 24 hours to get out of the country – and she did.’ That’s a slight overstating of the case, but yes, Mother Teresa was made to feel unwelcome in the North – and from her own side of the religious divide. Thus the world’s most famous nun, and her entourage departed from Aldergrove Airport, AKA Belfast International, after having had what might kindly be called a chequered stay in Belfast. Coincidentally, that’s the same airport British Home Secretary Reggie Maudling departed from on board an RAF plane, after his first visit to the North in 1972. After a fruitless day of trying to grasp the subtleties of Northern politics, he boarded the plane and said: ‘God what a bloody awful country. Get me a large Scotch.’ I suspect Mother Teresa did exactly the same thing.
PUT A CORK IN IT
HERE at the Irish Daily Mail we regularly receive a mixed bag of correspondence. Not long ago we had news of a silent champagne cork. An absolute boon! I mean, How many times have you wanted to quaff champagne at 9.30 in the morning, but couldn’t because the exploding cork would alert the rest of the office?
Recently, one piece of correspondence didn’t quite reach the scientific heights of the silent fizz stopper, but instead induced some serious headscratching. An email from global music streaming service Deezer entitled “Sing ’til we’re winning” encouraged us all to take part in a World Cup campaign to cheer on England.
It seems Deezer has curated, yes curated, a medley of World Cup soccer songs called ‘England Expects’, and felt that we might want to sing along. They’re offering the top ten English World Cup songs of all time, including such gems as Ant & Dec’s We’re On The Ball, World Cup Willie by Lonnie Donegan and We’ve Got The Whole World at Our Feet by the England World Cup squad.
Presumably they think that in these more enlightened times in Ireland we’re all mature, reconstructed Celts, happy to cheer England on. They may even think we’ve had a referendum about it.
But certainly, we’d be delighted to see the English lads do well.