#FinnishCrazyGames: Air Guitar is Returning to Canberra!

Alexander ‘The Jinja Assassin’ Roberts at AGA Finals in Melbourne

This event truly illuminates the Finnish sense of humour and has been dubbed “seriously ridiculous” by its competitors. All with the grandiose ideal of world peace, the slogan of the world-famous competition is “Make Air, Not War” as it is widely held that ‘if you are holding an air guitar in your hands you cannot also hold a gun’. Most of all it is about fun and lots of it.

The Finnish Crazy Games event last year represented the very first qualifying leg of the new Australian Air Guitar Championships with the winner on the day Jimmy Dangles joining us again this year alongside newly crowned Australian champion Alexander ‘The Jinja Assassin’ Roberts and runner-up Lily Rock N’ Roll for a performance you will not want to miss!

Lily Rock N’ Roll at AGA Finals in Melbourne

Jimmy Dangles at AGA Finals in Melbourne

Air Guitar World Championships

The Air Guitar World Championships have been organized in Oulu, Finland annually since 1996. The once so absurd idea has bloomed into an international media event that attracts a wide international league of contestants, audience and media representatives.

The global air guitar community makes the pilgrimage to Oulu every year at the end of August for the weeklong festival. Judges use the same 6.0 score system as in the traditional figure skating system: there are several varying criteria, and each judge must give the contestant a score from 4.0 to 6.0 on each of the following:

Technical merit—how much the performance looks like the real playing, including an accurate reproduction of all fretwork, chords, solos and technical moves.

Mimesmanship—how convincingly the performer can mime their performance, and create the illusion of an invisible guitar, apart from the technical accuracy of the fretwork

Stage presence—a charisma of rock star, the ability to rock, lack of stage fright and power to drive thousands of listeners; involves guitar showmanship and other emotional demonstrations.

Airness—the most subjective criterion, as "presentation" in figure skating—how much the performance was an object of art by itself, not only a simulation of playing the guitar.

Australia has had its share of success on the world stage. Air Guitar Australia (AGA) was first started in 2001 by Brett Provost aka Ronnie Riffless and since Australia has claimed 2nd place three times, most recently last year by Alexander ‘The Jinja Assassin’ Roberts.

Prior to last year's Finnish Crazy Games, there had not been an official Australian competition since 2010. Even so, a few Australians have travelled and provided representation in an unofficial manner by entering through the Dark Horse Qualifiers in Oulu, including the new organisers of Air Guitar Australia Tom “Sgt Wrecker” Hill, Clay “Bangers” Connolly and ‘Random Air Guitar Man’ from Melbourne.

Finnish Crazy Games is being hosted at the Embassy of Finland to Australia on October 13th 2018 from 10am with the assistance of our major partners KONE, Finnair and Wärtsilä. The event is a fundraiser for Canteen in support of their mission to help youngsters whose lives are impacted by cancer. If you can please donate here. Head on over to our website www.finnishcrazygames.com to learn more about the games and other activities taking place this year.