So it is with practitioners of the air guitar. Whereas once they were marginalized and laughed at, now world championships and bestselling video games glorify their art on an international stage. The admission 'I am an airguitarist' is no longer necessarily followed by smug tittering, or even tit smuggering, whatever that is. One suspects that whether it existed before it was made up just now, there is probably already a porn site dedicated to it.
But what of air guitar's neglected cousin, the air drums?
Ladies and gentlemen, it is time to admit it: I am an air drummer. True, occasionally I've been known to bust out the air guitar, but I feel my air-musical talents are better suited to the air-drumming oeuvre, particularly as my usual performance space is the driver's seat of a Ford Mondeo and this, given the right-shoulder-to-left-hip positioning of the seatbelt sash in Australasian-market RHD motor vehicles, mitigates against proper usage of said prop in the deployment of air guitar shreddage, unless one busts out the backward leftie skills in the style of Hendrix or Cobain. Passenger seat travel, of course, is more permissive vis a vis your typical right-handed air guitarist re the positioning of the seatbelt. But the air drums need no such assistance from props. All one needs is timing, tenacity, wrists like a subcontinental middle-order batsman, and the willingness to change one's name to Phil, as it is a scientific musical fact that all drummers are named Phil - eg Phil Rudd (AC/DC), Phil 'Philthy Animal' Taylor (Motorhead), Phil Selway (Radiohead), Phil Collins (Mediocrity), Phil Duff (Flange Gasket) etc etc etc - and all that aren't called Phil are actually Unmarked Phils.
With that we present Drum Phil: The World of Bollocks' Five Bestest Air Drum Anthems. In no particular order, because the universe hates order. Second law of thermodybollocks.
Knights of Cydonia, Muse (2006)
Crank the loud bit and try to stop your hands spontaneously flailing about. Go on. Around 4m30 in this live vid from Wembley '07.
In The Morning, Wolfmother (2009)
Given that Wolfmother is, in essence, a Led Zep/Deep Purple/Black Sabbath tribute act - three bands with mesmerically effective drummers - no surprise re the Getting Of An Guernsey here. Could pick any number of tracks - the album version of Woman would have gone well - but went for something off their Difficult Second Album (difficult in that it was probably just as good as their debut, but most of the world had stopped caring by then).
The Right Time, Hoodoo Gurus (1994)
Proof that any truly great Gurus song needed a B. Shepherd songwriting credit alongside that of D. Faulkner. Megolithic hairy arsed riff. Enormous drums. Play it loud.
Moby Dick, Led Zeppelin (1971)
No, not Bonzo's endless fucking solo in the middle, the bit that contained actual music at the start. Bonzo's drum sound was and remains legendary, and as Captain Stupidity (owner of a great deal of the IP behind Phil Duff) once remarked, 'Cowbells are where it's at.'
Noone Loves Me & Neither Do I, Them Crooked Vultures (2009)
Two words: Dave Grohl.
Or... any five songs at random off Motorhead's Ace of Spades album. Either-or.
The Doctor is OUT to see a physiotherapist about his air-drum elbow. Arsebiscuits.
