Impersonating teen music stars has its challenges

Kirk Baird

Thursday, Aug. 24, 2000 | 8:39 a.m.

What: Sync-In, Backstreet's Back and Britney.

When: 7 p.m. Friday.

Where: All-American SportPark, 121 E. Sunset Road

Cost: $12.50.

Info: 798-7777.

For some teenage fans it's the concert of a lifetime: 'N Sync, Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears, all in the same lineup.

And now that show is coming to Las Vegas ... with an asterisk firmly attached.

As in Sync-In, Backstreet's Back and Britney, all tribute bands to three of the biggest musical acts in the teenage music market today.

The concert is scheduled Friday at All-American SportPark.

With just enough variation in their names to avoid legal entanglements with their real-life counterparts, the idea, of course, is to retain the recognizability factor. After all, there's no such thing as coyness in the tribute-band business.

Instead, the objective of this concert (billed as "Battle of the Bands: The Ultimate Tribute Showdown") is to hit parents square in the pocketbook by offering their children -- mainly teenage girls -- what they want, only in convenient and easy-to-book imitation form.

Forget the fact that these are look/soundalikes to groups and singers that have been household names for only a few years (even Elvis had to wait years for impersonators to don the capes, sideburns and onstage karate moves).

A concert like this could only happen while the acts are scorching the music scene with multiplatinum albums.

"Britney will not stay on the charts forever," said Anna Czyszczon, who's impersonated Spears for more than a year. "Everybody has their hot spot and time."

Consequently, Czyszczon said in a recent phone interview from her home in Toronto that she plans to perform as the singer for no more than five years, before interest in the real-life Spears wanes and Czyszczon finds herself "thrown out a job."

Then the 17-year-old will focus on her real-life ambition of becoming a singer and having scores of fans chanting her name instead "of something I am not."

It's much the same way for Shawn Clyde, who impersonates Kevin Richardson of the Backstreet Boys.

An actor by trade whose ability to sing like Richardson landed him the job a year ago, Clyde said in a recent phone interview, also from Toronto, that he's content playing someone else in a band as long as that band remains in the top 10, and is "doing what Backstreet Boys do best, and that's making people happy."

For now, however, both Clyde and Czyszczon are enjoying two kinds of success: Their own, which they receive from their performances, and the kind generated from portraying someone else.

Call it living a dream or a lie, but the results are the same.

All three bands routinely perform in various venues and festivals across the United States for anywhere from a few hundred to 5,000 screaming fans. And there are the many tribulations they face as well -- most of which also plague their more-famous counterparts.

"We've gone through everything since we started," Clyde said, in talking about dealing with the fan hysteria. "We've had girls break into our hotel room and had our clothes ripped off ... It can get very scary."

Of course, one year ago that wasn't a problem.

Now, simply by dying his sandy blond hair jet black, growing a semblance of facial hair and learning to act and sing like Richardson, along with fellow Backstreet impersonators, he has an admitted advantage over 99 percent of the male population when it comes to the opposite sex.

"We can use it to our advantage if we wanted to," Clyde said, "(but) we don't do it that often." Still, he admitted, "sometimes it just gets away from (me) and (I) can kinda just forget, I'm not really Kevin, I'm just Shawn."

Czyszczon said her resemblance to her counterpart is also uncanny, but only after undergoing a transformation to the "Britney look," meaning the hair, clothes and makeup the singing sensation sports. But when all is complete, she said, it's enough to attract the attention of others and induce observations of, "Wow, you look just like Britney Spears."

That doesn't mean the remarks are always flattering. Czyszczon said she has on occasion heard comments she would consider rude: "They'll make a remark or something about my body, which is sort of the price I pay because Britney has this sexy image."

When asked what is the best thing she could hear, Czyszczon laid her modesty aside for a moment.

"That you're prettier than Britney Spears, you sing better than Britney Spears and you dance better than her."

Can a tribute act to Anna Czyszczon be far behind?