LOL, TCR.

So Yngwie Malmsteen is sort of the guitar world's equivalent of the Xtreme Flourish guys?

Hey isn't he doing an album with the Ulmen 4?

Uh, waaa-a-a-ay off track here. Back to your regularly scheduled programme...

In a sense, George. He has hands like you've never heard before. He's all over the frets, and it's fast, furious, and amazing. For the first minute, you're saying, "Holy cow, listen to this guy!" For the second minute, you're saying, "Man, this guy is the most fantastic guitar player I've ever heard, and I've never come across anything like this!" For the entire third minute, you're scrambling across your living room and you can't find the off button fast enough.

Thankfully, both past and present masters in magic seemed to understand that you can't just assault audiences with material like this, no matter how brilliantly or amazingly it's executed. I guess what generally made them masters was their interest in connecting with an audience rather through their magic rather than overwhelming them with it.

Cheers,

TCR

(Notice how I tied that in to the topic to keep from getting deleted? )

Nicely done, Lance! My finger was hovering over the delete button...

Interesting that the highly-technical, show-offy flourish guys think that displays of skill are "the wave of the future" and that "less enlightened 'magicians'" will be left in their dust. Yet how many of them actually make a living performing? How many of them has anybody in the general public even heard of?

Don't misunderstand me--there are some of these guys who are very entertaining. But for the most part they are not successful because they don't understand the reason why the greats, past and present were/are successful: the audience could relate to them. the show wasn't all about the performer, it was all about the audience!

So some people stood around for days waiting for Blaine to do something.
So what?
It doesn't lessen my argument -- that audiences today are less willing to invest time than they were in Houdini's day.
All it does is show that there are idiots in every age!
Think about it: You stand around for a couple of days waiting for some guy to do a non-trick.
How long would these people hang around if something were happening?

We would have to get rid of the TV and the Motion Picture industry. Then we can make
a movie fair comparison.
Copperfield, Lance Burton, and Penn and Teller still make tons of money. I guess it's how well you market yourself.

Once again, I'm going to make an analogy of magic to country music.
Most people would say that the old greats like Hank Williams and Patsy Cline would be better than more modern guys like Garth Brooks or George Strait. But Garth Brooks drew a crowd of somewhere around a million people in Central Park, a place I wouldn't associate with country music at all. None of the people in the good old days did that. Is Garth Brooks technically a better musician or singer than these older artists? I don't think so. If you'll watch him, he doesn't play his guitar half the time. Half the time, he just holds it and lets his band play. If you watch that concert, he isn't doing the most amazing vocals you've ever heard either. He loses his breath a lot, and a lot of his songs don't sound nearly as spiffy as on the albums (especially "Callin' Baton Rouge - if anybody happens to know that one . . . ) No, I think the things that made Garth so appealing to even the New Yorkers were things like taking water bottles and charging the audience with a good splashing during "Fever," running down into the crowd during some of his slower songs and taking flowers and notes from the people, throwing out a free guitar or two between songs, getting the audience to sing along on certain key points and tellin them how much he appreciated it . . . plus telling them exactly what the songs meant to him personally.

Eugene Burger talks a lot about how magic is going to go in two directions in the near future: more big, startling theatrics and focusing more on the human personality. I've got to say, Garth has always been pretty theatrical, but if you'll notice, in the Central Park show, there were very few special effects compared to his older concerts. It was pretty much just about having a good time playing music and giving the people some things to relate to.
If our generation of magicians is going to be as good as the magicians of the past (and I'm even starting to think of David Copperfield as part of the past, even though he's still alive and well and amazing the world all the time . . . it's weird to think he's been going for at least twenty years), I think we need to focus more on the entertainment value. Instead of giving out a guitar, we magicians can (two thumbs up to Paul Harris) produce a Hershey's bar from an empty wrapper and give it to one lucky audience member. Magicians may not be getting flowers as they walk through the audience, but our audiences can give us some more intangible things that are just as good or better.

Eugene Burger talks about how a lot of magicians will kill a major moment of magic by making a stupid joke that just destroys the mood. Wouldn't that be kind of like a singer giving the cold shoulder to someone who was trying to hand him a dozen roses? A lot of times, if Garth's audience got loud enough, he would quit singing and let them sing the songs for a while. It is really incredible to see something like that. I think magic could benefit from that same kind of attitude. David Copperfield levitating audience members or vanishing 13 audience members. I'd say that's some magic for a new generation!

I can't say much about the past, really, because I wasn't even born, but I know that today's world seems really complex, and it puzzles me a lot. I could be wrong, but it seems like things were simpler about forty years ago or fifty years ago. It never ceases to amaze me to think about people like Thomas Nelson Downs or Nate Leipzig, who did what we would call close-up magic from the stage! Nate Leipzig opened with a thimble routine and then did all card tricks! Now would that take some showmanship or what? It sounds ridiculous to try a trick of catching coins onstage in a big theater, but Thomas Nelson Downs got famous doing just that. Sometimes I wonder how that would go over today. After all, David Copperfield opens his show (after he appears on his motorcycle) by a little trick where he twists his wrists all the way around.

I guess it's just a moot question. There were great magicians then, and there are now. There were awful magicians then, and there are now. At the same time, nobody vanished the Statue of Liberty back in the days of Downs and Leipzig and all the other "greats," but you sure don't see many people doing the "Miser's Dream" or thimble manipulations and getting famous anymore. And when I read about Houdini's escapes, they just sound a lot better than the stuff I've seen on TV nowadays. I really can't make up my mind on this question, and yet I suddenly feel like I've written an entire book on the subject.

Ah well, I know this is long-winded, but I hope I threw out some good food for thought, after all, that's the name of the forum.

Happy Halloween everybody . . .

Peter- You really think that the honest hard working people who watched Harry Houdini were idiots? Houdini was a master showman and possessed skills that kept hundreds of people captivated for hours at a time. Those "idiots" allowed him to make a good living. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you don't believe the ones who pay you are idiots.
Please respond.
Rod

Serling, what is your point?

Jakks

Peter, do you think our own Amazing Randi would be carried from his hospital bed to look for Blaine's ghost to appear on Halloween?
I would bet if old Harry was alive today, every one on this site would want to see him
perform.
vinny

Rodney,I did not mean to imply that the people who watched and waited hours for Houdini to escape from something were idiots.
I DID mean that the ones who spend hours today waiting for Blaine to not do something are!
And how on earth do you extrapolate that to my audiences. You are putting words in my mouth by saying that the people who pay me are "idiots." I NEVER said that!
Or even implied it!

And Vinny, I'm sure everyone here would like the chance to see Houdini perform.
But I doubt if anyone would want to spend a couple of hours in his company!
(He was not a very nice person!)

Peter,
I apologize if I misinterpreted you- it was unintentional.
Fraternally, Rod

Rodney,
No problem. It's just that, after all these years, I have far too much respect for my audiences to ever suggest that they are anything but intelligent people.
I guess that falls in the area of far too many magicians who blame their audiences when their acts fall flat or otherwise flop:
"They just didn't get it" or something like that is their usual excuse.
Actually, it's the magician who didn't get it! His act just doesn't work in that venue and that is nobody's fault but his own; it's certainly not the audience's fault!
So, as I said, no problem, Rodney; after all, we're doing "tricks", not curing cancer or sending astronauts to the stars!

Agreed.

Obviously this is a statement of personal opinion, so it can't really be "wrong," but other than the fact that you imagine you would prefer one stunt over the other, I can't understand why one audience would be stupid and the other not. What is to be gained from maligning people whose great crimes are that their personal tastes differ from yours?

--Christopher Carter