Air guitar returns to rock Custer

By: 
Jason Ferguson

On Saturday, March 14, 2020, the best air guitar masters in the region were supposed to converge on Custer Beacon for a night of crowd-raising antics that would have made the best of the hair bands proud.
Then, COVID-19 hit, providing the ultimate buzzkill.
And while it won’t be an official U.S. Air Guitar Championship as it was set to be in 2020, an air guitar championship is set to strike the right chord this Saturday, Oct. 16,
 at the Custer Beacon once more.
“This year, we are doing our own thing,” said organizer Chris Pelczarski. “We know that Custer is ready for another air guitar championship, even if it won’t feed into nationals. We need something like this.”
Around 20 competitors are expected to take the stage Saturday, and all rules can be found at airness.reg
fox.com/airguitar. Cost is $15 to enter, and last minute sign-ups are welcome.
Each competitor gets to play a one-minute track of their choice in the first round. In the second round, the judges choose a track and all competitors who advance compete to the same one-minute track.
Judging is done using the figure skating scale of 4.0-6.0. There is a panel of five judges. Among this year’s scheduled judges is First Gentleman Byron Noem.
Competitors get judged on three criteria: stage presence, technical merit and the most important: “airness.”
Pelczarski described airness as the intangible quality of a performance “that has it transcend to a new level.”
Competitors must have a stage name, costume and their one-minute track. Signing up early is the best way to guarantee a spot to compete, and a $500 cash prize will be awarded for first place this year.
“The key to being a good air guitarist is letting go and letting your stage personality take over.  We all have a little rock and roll inside and this is how you can let it out and find out what it feels like to be a real rockstar,” Pelczarski said. “While technical merit and stage presence count for sure, letting out your inner airness is what will truly make a performance shine – it’s the most fun for the competitor and the audience.”
Pelczarski will be among those performing (under his stage name Han Guitar Solo) but he will not compete for the prize. Unfortunately, defending champion Jason Deuhr, aka “Randall the North Wind Dupont” cannot compete this year either, so a new winner will ultimately be crowned.
Pelczarski encourages people to come early (from 4-6 p.m., with the competition starting at 7 p.m.) to attend the Custer Arts Council Fall Fundraiser, and there will be a raffle for items/experiences donated from the community during intermission of the air guitar competition. Raffle tickets can be purchased the evening of the event. Pelczarski said the entire evening is made possible by the Custer Area Arts Council.
Those who come to the show don’t have to compete. You can watch the entertainment that will undoubtedly have plenty of fog, lights, big personalities and of course, big hair.
Each year there is a World Air Guitar Championships in Oulu, Finland. The purpose of that event is to promote world peace. As they say, “You can’t hold a gun while you hold an air guitar.”
“Although many of us in South Dakota are pro-gun, we also support peace in this world,”  Pelczarski said. “The Custer Air Guitar Championship is a night when we can all get together and unite for world peace, no matter who we are, what we believe, or what our background.”
Pelczarski said something magical happens when you let a weird part of your personality take over publicly on stage— you learn that everyone has that inner airness and that it is healthy to be vulnerable.
“We could use a little world peace right now, don’t you think? World peace will start here, in Custer, with us, playing the air guitar together,” Pelczarski said.

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