[16] COVER STORY
MARCH 4-10, 2009 M E T R O S I L I C O N VA L L E Y
KARAOKE 15
Dbspm!Nbutvnpup!uftut!ifs!qjqft!po!Lbuz!QfsszÖt!ÕJ!Ljttfe!b!HjsmÖ!! bu!TvoozwbmfÖt!Cmvf!Cpoofu/ (He missed 2005 because he was getting married in Germany.) On his last attempt, he was the first in line at the Los Angeles auditions. He is no longer eligible for American Idol but he still loves to perform, and will be headed out on a Carnival karaoke cruise soon.
The Reluctant Bar Singer Carol Matsumoto isn’t shy so much as she almost seems like she doesn’t want to be here. She readily admits to me that she doesn’t like bars. But since she is a karaoke addict and needs an audience, she has to put up with the atmosphere. She makes it crystal clear that she is here to perform and that is all; she puts up with no shenanigans from drunken patrons, giving them frosty stares if they start to bother her. At fortysomething and about 5-foot-2, with shoulder-length jet-black hair and a baggy leather jacket, Matsumoto kind of disappears into the background. Before she goes up to sing, she hands the karaoke jockey a CD with the song she wants to sing on it—usually an older soft-rock hit, although she will change her selection to best fit the crowd, not trusting his selection. She does not use the prompter screen; after seven years on the karaoke circuit, she knows her songs by heart.
“Basically I taught myself how to sing,” she says. “I would just sing along with the radio and practice in my room.” Here at the Blue Bonnet in Sunnyvale, she looks a bit out of place. She sits at a table quietly waiting for her next turn, while everyone around her is drinking beers and laughing or yelling over a pool game. As the melody starts, I can see her visibly loosen up and start to enjoy herself. She wanders the floor, lost in her own musical world. “I always wanted to perform and sing in front of people because I like the attention,” she says. Now retired, Carol has recorded three CDs of cover songs, which she sells at her gigs and gives out as gifts. She admits that she would love to make a living in the studio. “What I would really like to do,” she says, “is just make CDs.”
The Headliner They first time I saw Archie Garcia, at Boswell’s in Campbell, he was wearing a three-piece suit, strutting his stuff while singing Mötley Crüe. I thought maybe he had come straight from work to the bar, but no—he wore the suit because it was his birthday. (The following week I would see him with jeans and a Darkness T-shirt; this is generally his uniform though he can still occasionally be found in preppy formal.) With his thick black-rimmed