No air guitar!

“I’ve attended over a thousand concerts,” says local writer Steve Weinberger, author of the book No Air Guitar Allowed. “It’s all about the concert characters we run into at every show, from the parking lot through the encore: the Unauthorized T-Shirt Guy, the Beer Whoo Crew, the Chatty Kathy Clan, the Makeout Couple, the Urinal Hi-Fivers, the Bro-Magnons, the Other Lead Singer Sing-Along Dude, and the Play-That-One-Song Guy, to name a few. I personified many of these characters, so [writing this book] was a coming-home experience.”

With a storyline reminiscent of stoner comedy films such as Dazed and Confused, Detroit Rock City, and Get Him to the Greek, Weinberger also sees the storyline as the template for a screenplay. “While selling the book at San Diego Comic-Con, former Steven Spielberg assistant Marc Fusco, who’s now also a director, approached me about doing a script based on the book. We are now actively shopping it as Marc’s follow-up to his comedy My Uncle Rafael.”

That film, a spoof of reality TV shows, recently screened at Horton Plaza and Mission Valley. As for Weinberger’s own experience in the movie biz, he notes, “I was once fired from UA Glasshouse in Point Loma for watching a movie while on the clock.”

Asked about his first concert, Weinberger at first cites, “Kiss in 1977, when they were still in the full makeup.” However, pressed for details, he admits, “It was actually Harry Chapin some years before that, with my parents. Definitely not as cool.”

Weinberger says he’s had many great, as well as terrible, experiences at rock concerts, only some of which ended up as fodder for the book. He recalls one of his worst concert-going moments as “having to let go of my wife’s hand as I ran away from a six-foot-six guy, ’cause I spilled a beer on his girlfriend.”

His wife is also the source of what Weinberger says is his greatest concert-going fear: “Having to sit through another Pet Shop Boys show with her...never again.”