Check out Thom
Effinger's band:
Mother Joseph's Academy Players,
every Friday at 8:30 pm.
Cafe Pacific
The Academy
Building
400 E Evergreen
Blvd., Vancouver, Wash.
(360) 695-9211
No cover
Effinger says
his band plays "geezer rock." He describes his own, personal,
real voice as "a cross between Billy Joel and Jackson Browne.
You can watch
Your Big Break with Thom Effinger at 6 pm Saturday,
April 29, at Cafe Pacific or in your own home on KPTV.
Your Big Break's
National Finals will be shown May 26.
Thom Effinger has a musical gift.
Some people can play the guitar pretty well. Others write
songs that make the whole world sing. Effinger, a 35-year-old
father of two who lives across the bridge in Vancouver,
Wash., can sing just like Billy Joel, Elton John and Jackson
Browne. Just like them.
"I've been given a gift by God," he says, "to contort my
voice."
Until recently, Effinger, who runs his own heating and
air conditioning business, could only impress the 40 or
so people who show up at his band's weekly gig at the Cafe
Pacific in the 'Couv with his mimicry skills. But after
being tapped last August at a tryout for the national television
show Your Big Break at Portland karaoke haunt the
Grand Cafe, Effinger has expanded his horizons. He believes
he's on the verge of being discovered.
"I think I have world-class ability with my vocals," he
explains confidently.
Unlike Effinger, most people discover Your Big Break
by accident. It comes on at 6 on Saturday evenings, that
fuzzy period when you're gulping down some din-din and trying
to figure out what to do that night. As you surf, you stop
at KPTV, on a man singing on stage. That guy, well--he kind
of looks like Garth Brooks, but not really. And he sounds
like Garth Brooks, but not really. Then, as the quote-unquote
Garth reaches the chorus in "Friends in Low Places," a message
flips on the screen: "Chris Doohan singing live as Garth
Brooks."
Blink. Process. Decipher. Welcome to the most bizarre show
on television--and it's not even Japanese!
This is the first year that Your Big Break has hit
syndicated rotation in the United States, but the show has
wormed its way around Europe for the past 15 years. According
to YBB lore, it's extremely popular in the Nordic
regions. A winner in Sweden who sang as Mariah Carey went
on to win that country's version of a Grammy for best pop
song. Wise to the show's Euro-cred, the ever-savvy Dick
Clark bought the rights to do an American version of the
show this year.
Each hourlong episode of Your Big Break features
five contestants, each singing one song as a certain performer.
At the end of the show, the studio audience uses electronic
keypads to vote for its favorite. The victor goes on to
the finals; ultimately, the grand prize winner takes home
$25,000, a trip to Europe to compete in the international
finals and a record contract that guarantees the release
of a single.
If the spectacle of quasi-Garths and Mariah-manques isn't
jarring enough, there's the host. Remem-ber Chris Reid of
Kid-n-Play fame? Bygone rap star of the high-top fade and
House Party hijinks? Well, now his high top is faded
and he's sporting the quintessential gameshow-host look,
in genial sport coat with hankie peeking out. You'll catch
Kid making smart-ass jokes every so often, but generally
he's about as funky-phresh as Ed McMahon. We're talking
serious Star Search déjà vu here, except
that the players are costumed to look like the person they're
imitating.
I get on the horn with Professor Robert Thompson, director
of Syracuse University's Center for the Study of Popular
Television. Thompson is actually paid to watch this kind
of schlock and put it in context. He says a show like Your
Big Break was just waiting to happen.
"It's the inevitability of a society absolutely obsessed
with celebrity," Thompson says. "What happens is, first
we're obsessed with celebrity because we're obsessed with
these individual people, and then it moves into not so much
being obsessed necessarily with the people themselves but
with the look and the myth that they represent."
I tell him the whole thing reminds me of the drag scene,
of going down to Darcelle's and seeing a guy who, for that
moment, really is Liza Minnelli singing "Cabaret"--even
though he's about 50 pounds heavier and is lip synching.
Thompson agrees.
"It represents the whole idea of not necessarily going
in drag cross-gender, but going in drag cross-character,"
he says. "It's doing Hollywood drag, and you can't ignore
it. There's a whole Mardi Gras, karaoke element to it all."
In karaoke, however, people who sound nothing like a song's
original performer can whoop up an audience with an inspired
performance. Your Big Break, on the other hand, wants
people who sound just like the performer they're
aping. Hopefully, they look like them, too.
"Sometimes you hit it lucky," says Larry Klein, the Burbank,
Calif.-based producer of Your Big Break. "Like with
Louis Armstrong. The guy looked so much like him, all we
did was fill in hair, some coloring and put some space in
his teeth."
Klein says that generally, a person's initial appearance
doesn't have much to do with their selection. Professional
costume designers and make-up people mold contestants in
the star's image. Race also doesn't seem to play much of
a role. So far, Your Big Break fans have seen an
Asian Johnny Mathis and a Latina Shania Twain. Klein says
he cares more about the voice than anything else.
"I'm not going to sit back and say, 'You're not black,
you can't do Marvin Gaye.'" Klein says. "Why can't they
be Marvin Gaye?"
Effinger surveyed the three voices he has down pat and
chose to try out with Elton John. His history with the Rocket
Man goes way back. His parents divorced when he was 8 years
old and only two records were left in the house--a '70s
compilation and Elton John's Tumbleweed Connection.
"Everyday I would come home from school and play that record
over and over and sing, trying to sound just like Elton
John and waiting for my mother to come home from work,"
Effinger says.
All those latch-key hours paid off. Effinger says his appearance
on Your Big Break (the episode airs Saturday, April
29, at 6 pm on KPTV) was a huge thrill. He was treated like
a star. From the moment he arrived on the set, he was only
called Elton. He was outfitted with a Royal Canadian Mounted
Police jacket and rhinestone glasses, just like Elton wore
in one of his concert specials. He was just like Elton except
for, as he liked to remind me, "a completely different sexual
preference."
When the show airs, the bar where Effinger's band, Mother
Joseph's Academy Players, hunkers down on Friday nights
is renting a large-screen TV so everyone can watch their
hometown boy. "I don't know if Elton would be flattered,"
he says. "I do know I did my best to keep his nuances and
embody that character."
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Willamette Week | originally
published April 19,
2000
|
