Raising the Bar

Harmik really enjoys watching the real Tom Jones. And because he makes his living impersonating the Welsh pop legend, it's almost part of the job description.

But, man, he hates getting in and out of the MGM theater where Jones performs.

"I'm not comfortable until the lights go down," says the single-named performer who looks uncannily like Jones, no matter what the lighting or the angle. "I try to go as low as possible. I go in jeans and T-shirt. I've wanted to wear a hat a number of times, but my wife won't let me wear a hat inside."

Still, people come up for photos. And it's embarrassing, as though people will think he is soliciting attention to steal the real Tom's thunder.

"But these days, I've had a lot of people come up and say they've actually seen me," Harmik says. That's kind of changed over the course of the years."

A lot has changed in the world of celebrity tributes, a subgenre of show business that keeps proliferating, even if respect has yet to match gross receipts. ABC's TV contest "The Next Best Thing" gave priceless exposure to Las Vegas tribute acts -- and $100,000 to Sahara headliner Trent Carlini -- and yet the show was judged by three comedians.

"The biggest obstacle to the impersonation itself is to be taken seriously," says Harmik, who last week launched a self-financed run in the Four Queens' new Canyon Club.

Sharon Owens agrees. "Let's say we're hired for a corporate party or event doing a legends act," the Barbra Streisand impersonator says. "The people are dancing and swinging around, and they'll take pictures, but you know what? There is an underlying lack of respect.

"It is something that we as impersonators either have to let bounce off us and just look at it as a job. But sometimes it penetrates," she admits. "Then you're left standing there going, 'Who am I?' "

Whatever one makes of impersonators, they can't be ignored in Las Vegas. For many years, ticketed tributes didn't go much beyond the 24-year-old "Legends in Concert" on the Strip. Now there's "American Superstars," the "Country Superstar Tribute," and a show devoted entirely to Neil Diamond. Locals casinos host touring tributes to everyone from John Denver to the rock band Rush.

Owens and Sebastian Anzaldo, the two stars of "Barbra and Frank -- The Concert That Never Was," both competed with Carlini on "The Next Best Thing." Anzaldo, who once drummed in lounge bands on the Strip, came in second with his Frank Sinatra act.

Carlini, who is back again as Elvis in "The Musical History of the King," says the show gave a lift to both tribute acts and audiences. "For people who are ignorant to the world of impersonation, I think it brought them a little bit of clarity. We are out there and we are great performers."

And for performers, "this show just may have raised the bar for them to clean up their act, to make it even better," Carlini says. "There's hope now. There's a television show for impersonators. You have a show. Next season, more people will come out to perform."

Harmik is all for raising the bar, because he believes the field is too crowded already.

"There's going to come a point, if not already, where the bubble is going to burst," he says. "Everybody today is an impersonator or a tribute artist. You sang in a lounge for 20 years, you found out what an impersonator made for a job and said, 'I'm an impersonator now.' "

He doesn't blame singers for wanting to make money, but "What then happens to the cream of the crop? I think they get hurt in the midst of all this."

If Harmik, whose last name is Kazanchian, counts himself in the latter company, it's because his looks almost preordained him for the job. A few years ago, the native of Queens, N.Y., was hired to play a clone in a Tom Jones video shoot. The producer asked what he needed to look like Tom.

"A shower and a shave should do it," his wife, Sherri, replied. The real Jones got a kick out of telling Harmik that he once realized he was signing photos of Harmik instead of himself. The illusion usually is shattered once Harmik speaks in his normal voice, but some people get angry when he tells them he's not the singer.

Harmik first tested the waters in the late 1970s, as a young teen. The manager of the neighborhood Elvis impersonator made good on his promise to deliver gigs that paid $100 a night. But in the big picture, "the world wasn't receptive. At least the world that allows you to make a living."

He became a stock trader until the mid-1990s, when he decided he wanted more excitement out of life. Harmik tested the Jones act at weddings and parties, then slowly worked his way up the ladder of corporate events. Owens was similarly blessed in the looks department. She worked as a public school teacher by day and dabbled in cabaret theater at night. When she spoofed Barbra Streisand in one production, "one of my gay friends said, 'You really should do this for real. There's a big living in it.'

"I laughed at him. I had no concept there was an impersonator world. I was a theater snob."

But the friend coaxed her down to a costume shop on Hollywood Boulevard. "They put the wig on me and all of them gasped," she recalls. In 2003 she quit her day job after making it to the finals of another TV talent contest, Fox's "Performing As."

"It was quite a turn of events. I was teaching students to completely be themselves," she says with a laugh.

After an inexperienced producer's failed attempt to launch a live "Performing As" in Las Vegas, Owens and Anzaldo took over operations and gave the show a new title in 2005.

They have done well at the Riviera, but Owens still daydreams about "how neat will it be to be 'Sharon and Sebastian' someday in Las Vegas. You never know if it will ever happen, but how cool will that be?"