Desert Island Tricks
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Desert Island Tricks
Matthew Pomeroy
Find out more about the creators of this Podcast at www.alakazam.co.uk
The Hello and welcome to this very special episode of Desert Island Tricks. I'll tell you why it's special. It's special for a few reasons. So the first reason, obviously, is it's a video. So this is our I think it's our fourth video podcast now, which is exciting. And the reason it's a video podcast is we have a special guest on today, but we'll talk about him in a second because not only is he a special guest that we have on, but he also gets to start our new season. So that's reason two that this is an episode that's special. So this is the first of our very second season.
Speaker 2:So we've done over 52 of the main podcast now, which is unreal. And of course, we've done even more. We're stranded with a stranger on top of that. So that's number two. Number three is our guest is the first person to get a new item. Oh, I feel like I should insert a sound effect there. We'll see.
Speaker 2:So the idea is up until this point, our guests have had eight tricks, one book, one non-magic item, but now they get to banish something on their island. They get to dig a big sandy hole, chuck something in that hole and get it banished from our industry for good. Now, this might be a certain line that magicians say a certain thing. Magicians say Maybe it's a plot in magic that they don't agree with, maybe it's just something about the industry in general, something that they could banish if they were allowed to. So today's guest is going to be the first person that gets to do that. So let's find out about today's guest.
Speaker 2:Matthew Pomeroy is a magician and a mentalist known for being one half of the Conjurers. Alongside Natasha Lam, their show Cabin of Wonders has been thrilling audiences in Las Vegas, with five star reviews across the board, from Broadway World, the Stage, fox News, just to name a few. Together they've appeared on TV with incredible performances on Penn Teller Fool Us, which was great, masters of Illusion equally great, and, of course, the Masters of Illusion Christmas special as well, forming in over 37 countries and selling out eight tours. We are thrilled to invite Matthew Pomeroy to the Alakazam Islands.
Speaker 3:So hello, matthew Well hello, that was very lovely. Thank you so much and congratulations on 52 episodes.
Speaker 2:I know it's just mad to think of all of the people that I've had the chance to sit down to. We've had some incredible on over the past year, so I'm excited that you're kicking off our season two, no pressure or anything. Thank you for having me. I'm excited. Well, we've been trying to get you on for a long time, but the truth is you are incredibly busy at the time of recording. You just told me that you've done three shows today and it's early, very early morning where you are now, so you must be exhausted.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and today's our day off, so we've just done three little events at Mandalay Bay and now we're here. I'm excited. I love this time of night. It's quiet and peaceful, so I'm all about it. Thank you for letting me do it so early in the morning. This side rather than your side, it's perfect.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm excited to see. So at the moment you're in, are you in Vegas at the yeah?
Speaker 3:so in Vegas six days a week with the show, and then we actually come back to England for two weeks in February. We're doing something in the Dorchester and a few little theatres, but, yeah, based here all the time, we're very blessed. The show just won the best new show in Vegas and we love it. We couldn't be more proud or happy. So, yeah, here, full time, we've got a house and we're fully Vegas people.
Speaker 2:And how many years has the show been going on there now?
Speaker 3:So we started in February last year, 24th of Feb, so not even a year yet. But yeah, I am incredibly blessed. When Tash and I came to Vegas and I've said it many times one thing that we wanted more than anything else was to be part of the Magic community. We was doing theatres and cruise ships and kind of everywhere, but nobody knew us and we was never in the conversation for anything. And I'm really blessed and proud and privileged that things like this have happened. Due to being here in vegas, we've made some incredible friends, but more than anything, more than the show and the reviews and all of that, it's just cool to be asked to do things like this. So thank you to you for having me and, yeah, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Like I say thank you for coming on, but I want to find out about so normally we wouldn't do this bit, but since we've got you and I'm super interested what was the progression into the Vegas show? How did that become a thing?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we was on broadway last year. We did some shows in and out of new york but also launched three cruise ships and did a american tour a bit of europe as well and a couple of english dates, but majority in america, and the ethos was to try and build an audience here. But I never allowed us to dream, and nor did natasha, that we could perform in vegas. We'd fly in and stand at the back of the rooms and be inspired by everyone and admired everybody who walked on the Vegas stage. Then we got one night here in Vegas and even now I've got goosebumps. I couldn't believe it and I phoned everybody backstage and said I'm here in Vegas, it's one time, one night, that's it, it's done.
Speaker 3:And then, after that show, I went to a rooftop bar and had a conversation that changed everything and it was that kind of thing and it's oversaid and overused. But all the experience, hopefully, and the time we'd spent honing what we do and the opportunity and we grabbed it with both hands and it was scary because we agreed to the contract but hadn't got visas, hadn't sorted anything out and had to sell everything change our life. And here we are. But I wow, I'm honored and privileged that that conversation happened and stepping on stage every night in vegas is truly a dream come true yeah, it must be incredible to be over there, and I mean, the audiences are so different from the uk to america as.
Speaker 2:So what was that change? It changes so often, like we have the rodeo.
Speaker 3:So the rodeo was just here. So I walked out to like a room full of cowboys and then, like we have a cement convention here at the moment, so I walked out to a room full of builders. You just never know. We just hit our 300th show yesterday and we managed to get a lot of the headliners and acts in and that's lovely because it's that magic castle audience where they're there to see magic and they're excited. But you just never know and it's a great learning curve to do it six days a week. Every week a you can hone the show and improve and tweak things and change almost on the fly. You can edit it the next day, but yeah, you just never know. We've had audiences that don't speak any english and we're a 90 minute show of talking a lot.
Speaker 2:So yeah, learning curve, but it's a good way to hopefully get better well, we've already had a little sneak peek into your repertoire, sort of um in john morton's episode, because you get a mention from from john morton, who says that he's worked with you, so with some bits and pieces, so maybe that's going to give us an insight into what your your list is going to be. Did you find the list difficult or easy to put together?
Speaker 3:incredibly difficult, and the books more than the effect, and I tried to choose things that nobody else had. I've listened to every episode and I love this show, so I've tried to choose things that are a little bit obscure and haven't been picked before, and there are some obvious ones that I took away because they've been chosen previously. But the books, oh, I struggled. The books, I love books. I kind of get lost in them nightly. So to pick a book I might have to do some honourable mentions. I don't know. I still haven't decided on the book. I've got four in front of me, so let's see what happens.
Speaker 2:Amazing. Well, if this is your first time listening to the show, the idea is that we are about to whisk Matthew away to his own desert island. When he's there, he's allowed to take eight books, one, uh, eight tricks, sorry. One book, one non-magic item, and banish something onto his island. Now particulars like who's there? What's there? All that good stuff? We do not mind, it's in matthew's own imagination. So, with that being said, let's go to your desert island now and find out what you put in your first position, what did you put in your first spot?
Speaker 3:so I've cheated, but I asked you ahead of time, so let's, I, I've put in the thing that got me started in magic really I guess, and almost the person. So my first thing is the chapters of Mark Spellman and the reason for that DVD set and that choice is many years before I even discovered Mark's work. I was searching for magicians and I found him and I was like, oh, I don't really know what he does, but he looks amazing. And I sent him a message and I remember vividly being on a train going into London, I was going to watch cabaret and I sent Mark this message asking how to do a routine. He had no need to reply to me, he had. No, I didn't think he would. And within 20 minutes he sent me about I don't know, maybe 30 paragraphs of full, in-depth help and he was so kind and he said just call me, it's fine, just let's talk it, let's just go through.
Speaker 3:And that kind of changed everything. And now we're very blessed. That's come full circle. And in our meet and greet people say to us can you help us? And I always remember that moment. And I was with Mark when he got the golden buzzer at the Palladium in London and I just think he's incredible, and I think that if you want to learn stagecraft, performance beats theatricality you can't really start in a better place. So yes, that was a long answer, but Chapters of Mark Spellman is my first one. It is a masterclass in everything to do with magic mark spelman is my first one.
Speaker 2:It is a master class in everything to do with magic. Yeah, mark is incredible and he's always very kind with his time. Um, and that dvd set really is a phenomenal dvd set. There's some incredible tricks on there. Oh yeah, but matthew, we're about to be devil's advocate. So from that dvd I'm going to restrict you to just one trick from that DVD.
Speaker 4:Okay, I'll do that.
Speaker 2:So if there was just one that you could take, what would that one be?
Speaker 3:There's an effect on there called Thief in the Dark that I did for a long time. That's not my choice but it's brilliant. Also there's one called Free Call, I believe, which is a phone. It's genius If you're in a hotel or a bar, or a chip it's perfect.
Speaker 3:But I'm looking down here what, when and where is my favorite effect? It's a dual reality trick quote unquote effect experience where the audience come up, three people sit on three chairs and Mark freely and elegantly and beautifully shows all these cards that have different things on and the audience mix them and then he just gives them out to the people on stage on the chairs and he directly reads their mind, but three times, and it progressively gets better and the method, I think, is as good, if not better, than the effects. There's a moment in there that when Mark teaches it he kind of throws away there's a thing of a clipboard and he says've done it a few times. It is phenomenal. Um, yeah, I love it.
Speaker 3:And if you want to just see how to pace a revelation and how to take time with the audience to make it feel real and believable and I've had that thing as many of us have where you get to a airport or a theater or your local magic club and you've left your bag in the car or whatever it may be. We'll just get 50 bits of paper, write on them and do 10 minutes of beautiful magic. So yeah, I've done it before. I think it's great. It's called Free Cool and I think it's disc three.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's a really good memory. You must, you must have watched that a lot. Um well, so I watched it so much.
Speaker 3:I always interrupt you, but I now hold cards left-handed. So all of the card work that I ever do if you see me on telly, wherever it is I've just released. There's a thing that we've just filmed that's coming out very, very soon, of me doing card magic on telly. I hold cards all left-handed. All my moves are left-handed and it's definitely Mark's fault because I'm right-handed in everything apart from cards, and I'm convinced it's because I watched Mark so much and I learned how he did everything.
Speaker 2:That's now how I do the moves and how many of these routines have you worked? Have you worked any of these into your shows, your live shows?
Speaker 3:uh, yeah, so I did the Mark sneak thief is is beautiful and there's a thing about don't look at a mark, feel a mark that I've always, always really liked and that's stuck in my head. So I used to do that on cruise ships a long time ago. There's no current mark effects or publications in our vegas show, but his thinking is kind of it runs, runs through my thought process. So I kind of try and take a step back and I've almost soaked myself and embraced all of his work so much that I feel like when I put an effect together, there's that little voice on my shoulder of what would Mark do? And then I just think he's great. If you're starting off in magic or if you're an expert pro, you can learn so much from what Mark's been kind enough to share well, a slight plug, all of the tricks that matthew just mentioned.
Speaker 2:If you're an alakazam unlimited member, which is our streaming platform, all of those tricks are on that platform for you to go there.
Speaker 3:Really, I didn't actually know, that's great there?
Speaker 2:yeah, so they're all there. If you want to go and check out all of those tricks, including um matthew's actual choice, then go there and check it out. But yeah, you're absolutely right, is it script?
Speaker 3:and explanation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so we've got, I think, thief in the Dark is on there, what, where, when's on there, and Freecore, I think, is on there as well. Well, that's phenomenal. Definitely subscribe now. Yeah, they are all phenomenal, but it does lead us nicely. So we've started off with sort of a mentalism parlor piece. So where are we going to go to with number two? What did you put in your second spot?
Speaker 3:I think it's my favorite effect in the world. I've done it in every show for the last decade. My second is Gypsy Balloon by Tony Clark. It gives me all the feels. It makes me feel like magic is real From doing it and performing it. The feels it makes me feel like magic is real from doing it and performing it and presenting it. I tell a story beforehand. That's a real, true story and I I have it on all the screens, which is a blessing, I guess. But just it's, it's beautiful and it's real magic. It's that thing of I love it when an audience don't know if it's real or if it's not real. And there are some effects and we can talk about them, where you're doing the effect and it's getting a good reaction, but the audience won't leave and walk away and go. Oh, I wonder if that was a real moment and the gypsy balloon feels like it is. When somebody sits next to you and those three bits of string roll into a ball and you throw it and it attaches, that's magic one. Then when you hyper kind of focus on the fact that they could join back together, imagine they could fuse and lock, then that moment happens. It's gas and screams and tears.
Speaker 3:We do it every single show, every single place. I've turned down cruise ship contracts because I couldn't get helium on the boat. Um, I really love it. It's, it's a staple of ours. I think we did it on Huckabee and it's not my favorite performance at all. I really don't like how that turned out, through our fault, and again, we can talk about that as well, but it's not how we normally do it. And when you just have one dim light and three people on stage myself, natasha and normally a child, but it can be anybody and they're examining everything from all sides, it's it's my favorite. And now we get emails and photos of people that have taken the balloon home and framed them and we've signed it and, yeah, I, I couldn't do a show without putting gypsy balloon in there somewhere.
Speaker 2:I think gypsy balloon's so interesting as well, because normally when we think of the gypsy thread, everything's very small and very focused. But what the gypsy balloon allows you to do is to keep that focus, because everything is focused in on that moment but makes it play so much bigger for a larger audience for sure, and it's got that thing where you can see it in a 2000 seat theater it's.
Speaker 3:And I'm still finding new handlings, which is really weird. But just the other day I did something differently on the revelation and it made it all better and I I work on it constantly because there's moments I learned this with a with Danny Hunt in a car park which didn't look suspicious at all. We were kind of hiding in the back of a car park playing with balloons as you do, and we worked on a new handling then and that was probably I don't know 15 years ago and it's been done way over 3 000 times now and it's my go-to. It feels right in my hands and I I did three times tonight. It's, it's my. If I can only do one trick forever, I think it'd be hard to persuade me to not pick the gypsy balloon. So, yeah, and Tony Clark's version is great. I've got a few little wrinkles and additions to it, but it all started with his DVD. That, yeah, that inspired me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a great choice and a stark contrast to your first trick as well. Really, You've got this sort of very serious mentalism piece to this sort of whimsical balloon gypsy thread, which I think is, yes, a lovely little contrast, but it leads us nicely onto number three. So what did you put in your third spot?
Speaker 3:so I'm not even sure this is allowed. You can veto this and I can pivot quickly if I need to. This is an effect that's been out for about two weeks, so it's very, very rare that an effect comes out that I cannot sleep because I am so excited about, and I re-scripted this for my own kind of blurbage how I would present it immediately, like the second I saw it, and this trick is hummingbirds, by Luke Jermay, I think, and I love Luke's work. I think it's the greatest thing he's ever created. I even now I'm so excited.
Speaker 3:I imagine magic as snapshots. So when I create and construct a show, I see it in pictures and if you don't know what hummingbirds is, it's a rising card effect but the cleanest I've ever seen and it's got all the moments. It's got a feather that floats up with the cards. It's got a glass dome that encapsulates the cards before they rise. It's pure theater at a table and it really changes the essence of close-up magic, because you now have close-up theater and there's moments in it like the cleanup is just every beat of it. You can do things that you've never been able to do before, like fan the cars and farrow them and just crazy to borrow the deck.
Speaker 3:It's gorgeous. It's, as Andy Nalman would say, delicious magic and I truly, truly it's going in the after our show. We do a VIP half an hour. They sit with me in a different room and we do close up. It's 100%. I've ordered everything. It's on the way. It's rare that it happens, but I just know, and I've now read the book and I've ordered it and everything but beautiful magic, truly, truly stunning.
Speaker 2:So you mentioned that when you're constructing your shows and stuff, you think about maybe the beats and the moments and how you're gonna put everything together. So in terms of this, it's not with you yet. So what have you imagined for it, what have you conceptualized in your head? What have you put together?
Speaker 3:so I I've always loved the dome. There's something about that dome that. So it's a glass, I'm not, it's like a bell jar, I guess, but it looks great. There's a thing and we'll come on to it. I'm not going to reveal it, but my next effect is a full picture effect. When you see it, you instinctively think magician. It gives you the feels, and this has the same for me.
Speaker 3:So when I do it, I've changed the story a little bit, just to kind of keep it fresh. Lux is perfect and it doesn't need to be changed in any way. I've just added a few little bits. A wand doesn't feel right in my hands or with my presentation, so I've changed that. I've added a bit of smoke in the table and a few little aesthetic things, but just the ability to borrow a deck. So now, because of this effect, everybody in my vip room has cards on the table, decks of cards that they can have, they can keep, and now I can borrow them, because it makes it stronger, it amplifies it and evolves it just a little bit more. If they take those cards now they can't be anything and I've reset my little station of where I sit, having a little compartment built to make it even cleaner again and I've added a track. I've got a track made and built. It's being done now that will play in the background. I've got some bird cages that will hang from the ceiling and on the last um revelation it will. They'll chirp and stuff, so it will loosely feel like Luke's but hopefully will change it enough to feel like the conjurus as well.
Speaker 3:But I really think it's gorgeous and the method, well, it's not knuckle busting, it's just let's just concentrate on engaging, let's hook the audience, let's get them to care. It's that effect where they all lean forward, and I wouldn't open with it, I wouldn't do it as a middle piece. It's not a bridging effect, it's that, whatever you've ended on, guys, you've been incredible tonight. I never do this, this. Do you want to see one more? Let's dim the lights, let's lock the doors, let's put on a vinyl record, let's pour you all the whiskey, let's. It's special and I think it should be treated as such. It might be my favorite. I do loads of close-up stuff but I, oh I cannot wait to perform it I love the idea of the cards on the seats.
Speaker 2:I think that's superb, that's great, like giving the, the audience a deck of cards, um, but we've recently come back from the session and luke performed this there as part of his show to to the magicians. And you're absolutely right. There's a moment well there are sort of two moments that stick out, sort of, where he introduces the feather and that that part of the performance everyone sort of starts to lean in at that point because it's introducing a sort of a strange aesthetic to the trick by introducing the feather, but it makes it so much more intriguing, and so there's definitely that moment. And then the second moment is where he picks up the deck and then sprays them along the table from a height.
Speaker 3:Um, there we go and I guarantee every magician that watches this, when you watch the revelation of luke, when you watch the video of him performing this, the book's incredible, but there's a video and he does that drop at the end and he shows you the cleanup. While I stood up in the house I was like I can't. It's phenomenal. I thought about things like I could, without going too heavy into methods. I could do a feather drop so it could rain feathers. At the end I could get the feather to float into a spectator's hand. There are many things, but every time I think of an addition I kind of rain it back, because the beauty is in the glass and the deck. It doesn't need theatrics as much as my brain would like it to need, because it's almost well. It is perfect as it is.
Speaker 3:I can't wait to see luke perform it. Hopefully he's in vegas and I'll get him to come and do it. He can take over the vip. It's his. Just I. I really love it. It's just great. It's great magic. Maybe a little hummingbird and a blank card that they can sign. So imagine a gold embossed hummingbird, three of them, all different colors, and now they sign those and they're the ones that go in the deck and they float and you've now got the most beautiful giveaway that they can keep forever.
Speaker 2:I don't know it's a work in progress, but I can't wait to work on it well, that leads us nicely onto your next one, which you've already teased, because earlier on you referenced your next uh item. So what did you put in your next spot? It's a blindfold act it's.
Speaker 3:It's my go-to, it's the one I think that got us here to vegas. It's. I love the gypsy balloon but I'm never more comfortable on stage than with a blindfold on. We spoke before we went live and I've done it three times tonight. I've got the superhero tape marks here, so I had inspiration from Coup de Bucs and I love the clay and the kind of putting everything on your face. So it's impossible and we fast forward. And there's many other people, so Banachek, obviously, richard Osterlin, darren, of course. Luke's got great stuff.
Speaker 3:I'm friends with Jerry McCambridge and I've kind of picked his brain till the early hours of the morning, same as Banaszczak, same as Frederick. There is something about walking into a room 10 people, 10,000, doesn't matter and there is a performer with a corn sack, blindfold, tinfoil, whatever it is on their face. It's immediately engaging. I'm friends with Aaron Crowe and he does the wax pour and one day I'm going to lock him in a room and tell him to give me it, but I do keep suddenly hinting. I'm like Aaron, you know the wax pour. That'd be great in Vegas. So hopefully I mean that's beautiful. Aaron gets a candle and pours wax in his eyes and then he puts the bandage around, which is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
Speaker 3:But yeah, just being on stage of a blindfold is definitely my happy place. And when we came to Vegas I was nervous because we'd flown in before and seen all the shows and at this time we knew nobody. So I saw Banachek do a beautiful blindfold Jerry is like the king of a mentalism and be blindfolded here in Vegas. And see Frederick there's a great blindfold. So I met all of these people and invited them to the show and said look, would you mind just watch it and if you don't like it I'll take it out. We did private shows for them before we went live, so if I didn't like it would take it out. And frederick didn't see it. But I spoke to him and it's fine, it's different enough, but we change it.
Speaker 3:It's not a q a. I love q a, but we don't do it because jerry does. But just being taped up and it's the one thing. Not that we have any quote unquote magician fallers, but we don't use a normal method. There is no down anything. So Magic Live was my favorite time because I'd have queues of people that would wait after the VIP outside the room to go to the blindfold. Can I buy you a coffee? Can we just 10 minutes? Just come with me. So people have tried to buy it and all the fun stuff. And it's not me being great, it's not my method, it's just a method that I found in a book a very long time ago. But yeah, the blindfold. What a beautiful piece of magic.
Speaker 2:So I've got two, a twofold question for you. Yeah, number one when it comes to blindfolds what made you decide on the blindfold that you've? Because there's so many methods out there now, why did you go for the version that you've gone for and what is that? Um, so that's question number one, and question number two is would you be able to share a moment that really resonates with you and your audiences when you're doing your blindfold act?
Speaker 3:yeah, of course. So, um, now we use many methods for our blindfold. There is there is like six different things going on at once, which helps a lot. There's things everywhere happening, which helps me in every way.
Speaker 3:My blindfold currently in the Vegas show is two sticky poker chips, and legitimately sticky. I hand them out. Both sides have double sided tape on. So I give them out. I say check them, there's no switch, they're the same ones, they're in play the whole time. And the reason for the tape is I've just never seen anybody else do it and I wanted to add my own little wrinkle onto them. So I say these are going to stick my eyes closed.
Speaker 3:So now, if anybody has the even notion or preconceived idea that I can see, well, I can't. So the chips go on my eyes and they push them as hard as they can. There's a few nice little lines there and so now they can see them really stuck. And we have gaffer tape and I have three bits of tape that go on in the normal way, kind of two diagonally and one across, because I want to kind of lead them down the little path a bit. And I say, but wait, there's a roll of gaffer tape actually on the table. Let's use more. You have to know that I can't see. So then I just start wrapping it around my head. So now from the top of my lip to my forehead is just wrapped in tape and I go. But wait, maybe I can see, maybe there's a way, somehow, some way I don't know how, but you might have kind of premise and I have a bandage or a gauze.
Speaker 3:Now I was in Aladdin a few years ago, five, and as I was flying on the magic carpet, legitimately, a piece of wood hit me in the face, ripped off my tear duct. So now I have wires that hold my eye kind of in place and I've got fake hair. Whatever the glasses hide the scar and the lights help, so does the makeup. But I tell this story and that's kind of what I think allows me to do the blindfold because it's legitimate. So I sit there and I talk about having two cups on my eyes and a bandage around my head and for a moment I thought I would never get to perform again and I realized when that blindfold was on, maybe I would have to perform for the rest of my life with a blindfold attached to my head. So that allows the bandage.
Speaker 3:So now we wrap the bandage, we fully mummy-fy me, so I just have my mouth and then they check everything. I lean back and they look under I emphasize where I could see. I'm like, look here, check by my nose, etc. So I'm fully and they can put their hands over my eyes, whatever they want. I turn around, I go to the other side of the stage. I've sat in a cage before that's lifted up, whatever.
Speaker 3:So that's the blindfold that I use and I try and make it as theatrical as I can. I want it to look ridiculous. If you see somebody in a straitjacket and they're not getting out believable, then why go in a straitjacket? So it has to look good. So and that's all, coup de Box and the other people that I mentioned, plus many, many more.
Speaker 3:And the moment that I love is I get them to hold my hand and it sounds really weird. The first thing that I do is an introduction with colors and I said I'm going to read you it's not about the audience for a minute, it's just me, and you forget there's a thousand people here. Just hold my hand, take a deep breath in and just sink into the moment. I'm going to somehow read the colors that you've got in front of you just from your body language and we have this lovely, private, personal moment. And there's some things that happen in this moment that lead to later in the show. But I get them to reveal a secret with the blindfold on and as they whisper the secret, the audience hears it because it picks up on my mic. But people I'm not going to in any way compare our show to Derek Logardio's in and of itself, because that is, I think, my favorite magic show.
Speaker 3:But that moment where every night people cry we have it probably four or five times a week. People gasp and scream and run out of the showroom because the dynamic shifted, everything's changed. It's now insular and I'm now insecure. I've told the story, my glasses are off, like the protection's gone, the bandage is here, it's all raw and they're with me on this journey. And before we get to revelations and things, I get a secret to be told and whispered, but loud enough that we're all now in on it and it becomes this really personal, private, poignant moment. That I think is a great bridge into much more hard-hitting things with the blindfold on my head and there's many things like that. But yeah, we've done it thousands of times and it's the thing that not falling off the stage, all of the, the bits that you pick up along the way well, it sounds incredible answer.
Speaker 2:No, that sounds absolutely incredible. I think that sounds great, and I think the layers that you've put I mean literally and not literally there, it's just yeah, it sounds absolutely incredible and does lead us very nicely onto number five. So what did you put in your fifth spot?
Speaker 3:It's the first effect I ever performed on any stage and it is a chair routine. The chair routine is beautiful for performers that travel because it packs so flat and there's many amazing versions of this. The first one that I saw was David Burglass, but obviously that leads into Enigma, and Darren and Andy Gladwin's got amazing. There's's so many good chair routines, but it's a demonstration in psychology, I think, and it involves four people. It's a very or five, however many you want. You can do it sitting down or standing up, even though that's kind of counterintuitive because of the chairs, but it still works on pads or whatever you want to stand on. And Mark Paul's a very, very good person to learn this from, and sorry names will keep jumping to me that I've learned over the years and everything that I'm saying I should preface by this. This is all because standing on the shoulders of giants is so true. I have been inspired by everyone to create, hopefully, what we do, so I love that.
Speaker 3:It is a demonstration in crowd control in the trick and outside of it, so it's like sneak thief, I guess. You have to be good with an audience. You have to learn how to listen and talk and have control. That audience management is so important and there's quite a lot of stuff happening without an effect. There's no magic normally until the end of a chair routine. So how do you make that interesting and engaging? How do you punctuate the beats and the moments? And it's really fun. We open the show of it, but it can go anywhere. They're enclosed of it. I've seen it in the middle. We open, but it's just fun, it's uplifting, it's upbeat. You can do it with kids, you can do it with adults. Everybody enjoys it with adults. Everybody enjoys it. We've added loads to ours. It's got like five different effects happening, but the end effect of behind the chairs and the revelations is always going to get a great sort of kicker reaction.
Speaker 2:It's one of those. I think we've spoken about it on the podcast before. It's sort of a counterintuitive thing, right, because a lot of the time everything is inevitably going to play out. It has to play out that way, but there's a missed logic by the audience where they don't quite connect those dots, and our job is to blur the lines when it comes to that logic and what the audience are understanding, right. Um, so with your one, how did you go about taking all of those bits from you know burglars and mark paul and andy gladwin? How did you put all of those pieces together into your chair test?
Speaker 3:well, we change it often, so it changes from place to place, theater to. We did it here at Christmas. We did a full Christmas show and I had the audience wear hats. So the routine would begin with a table 20 Christmas objects very David Berglaas. They would come up and they would choose four of them. Whatever they want to have, they're their gifts, they're their presents Free choice, take them, go and sit in a seat Free choice, take them, go and sit in a seat.
Speaker 3:I've added things again, not method heavy, but I know what seat they're going to sit in ahead of time. So this now allows me to walk to the front of the stage, get them to close their eyes. I will show the audience the number that they're going to sit in before they sit in it. I say open your eyes, thank you for trusting me, go and have a seat and they sit in that chair. It Trusting me. Go and have a seat and they sit in that chair. It's a lovely little plausibility moment. I think it makes it feel more real. They sit down with their item, I go. Great, we've got to make this more random, right? This is not random enough. So put your items in a little stand above the chair. This is a little kind of stand that they put their item on. So let's say Santa Rudolph, I don't know, a Christmas tree and an ornament, great. I then say we need hats. It's Christmas, right, party hats, let's do that. So now under everybody in the audience's chairs there is a party hat, all of different sorts. So we have a Santa hat and a top hat, whatever. Now they choose them. So they go and get their hats. Or Christmas music's playing, a disco ball, everything's happening, graphics on the screens. So now we have four items and four hats on the people with the items.
Speaker 3:I then say this sounds overly convoluted, but I promise in real time it plays fine. So I say, good, now I'm going to write down four numbers on four envelopes. Actually, if I did it you might think I could change it in some weird way. So I get a kid. The kid stands on a chair, a light hits the kid and with a crayon the kid writes one, three, four, two, any order that he wants. I put these on a bulldog clip and they float up above the audience. So now these envelopes are hanging in full view, master prediction style. But they're there. They never go out of sight.
Speaker 3:Great Tash now gives everybody a number. So one, two, three and four. And we say we're going to play a game, a simple game. You've got three turns to stand up, move around, change chairs, change items, change hats, change numbers, do whatever you like, it doesn't matter, just do it randomly. So now all the music starts. We had a Santa that danced with them. Whatever they move around, they sit down, we do it again and we do it again, perfect. I then get the kid to do this magical gesture and the envelopes go down to his hand and he unclips them off the clip. He walks on stage and hands them out. So two goes to number two, three to number three. It's not in our hands, it's in the kids' hands.
Speaker 3:I say to everybody imagine it's Christmas day right now. Open your envelopes. As they're opening them, tash takes the boards back, allows their hands to be free and they open it up. Inside each of them is the ornament above. So it's fine. So just a nice little moment and I go that's great, but remember the hats. The hats are the thing, right. So then they stand up, they go behind the chair and the hats have spelled out the word hope. So H-O-P-E, but we get the revelation. So hats, hats, hats, hat. That gets the applause I should have mentioned.
Speaker 3:I, as well as getting the items chosen, have thrown out a conveniently cut pack of cards. Someone looks at a word. The word is hope. They remember the word, lock it in their minds as the hats are revealed. I say one more thing Stand up. What was your word? Hope Perfect Because, and then we do the revelation they keep the hats, they keep the gifts, the kid gets a present and everybody goes home happy. That was a lot, but it condenses to six minutes. It's fun, upbeat and there's loads of magic and it feels quite theatrical wow, that just sounds incredible.
Speaker 2:And what I really love about that. Well, there, there's lots that I love about that, but I really like the idea of putting the envelopes on the bulldog clips and raising them up, because that's taken a piece which is already big. I mean, we talk about being able to fill a stage. It's incredible. But one thing that I've noticed a lot, certainly in in performances and in magic shows is we tend to fill the stage horizontally but we don't tend to think about it vertically and there's so much that we can play with above us, not just either side of us. So I really love that you've added that moment in and the idea of the party hats and everything. I think that's great. And you say that's your opener.
Speaker 3:It was the opener for Christmas. Well, actually it was a second effect in the show. We have a big confabulation thing that starts the show. We go on a journey, a story, together and the audience can legitimately choose an adventure. And let's say they say we're going to go across the oceans, all of the screens change to oceans and ocean sound plays and you get the smell of the water. So that's how we start the show and then we pivot to the chair. It's not currently in it, but it was in the Christmas and we might bring it back at some point.
Speaker 3:A top tip for the charity team that I kind of do and it might not help, but it could. I always end either on my own, with the audience in the chairs, like back in their seats, or with them. Because what can happen and I've seen it a few times is you end on the last ta-da and then you have a really weird moment of thank, you make your way back to your seats and the routine kind of plummets rather than lifts. So why not get the four spectators to stand in a line with you and do a bow and now, in the applause of the bow, you send them back to their seats or send them back, then reveal the hope or whatever it is for you, and that's where you get the spike again, just because a cherry scene is a weird one where it can, like Darren did it with McFly. There's many ways, obviously, but I think it has to have that last little pulse to keep the energy as high as the middle of the effect do you want to become a magician?
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Speaker 2:Absolutely incredible. So there, absolutely incredible. So uh, there you go. If anyone wants to do a chair routine, you've got. You've got the advice that you need for the end in there, uh, but it does bring us nicely onto number six. So what did you put in your sixth spot?
Speaker 3:my sixth spot is it's from andy nyman's lecture notes, I think it was in his book bulletproof as well, and it is called the Burning. And the Burning is well, just, it's incredible. Andy is one of those people that if he releases something, I just I don't even need to watch a trailer. I don't read the ad copy, it doesn't matter, I just want to get lost in his thoughts. He is sensational and the Burning. Burning is basically and it completely fooled me you have a hunger game style bowl that's got a thousand matches in already. I love it because you get the picture and you then get an audience member to come up and this works close up or stage, and you say to them take out three matches, any three that you want, and mark one of them. So get a sharpie and mark the end. They do that. You then say put all three in your hand and shake them up, which they do, and you say take it out. Now you have a lovely moment that if they take out theirs, you go you're incredible at this, let's try it again. Then you do it one more time if, if they get a random one, which happens obviously more than it doesn't you say it's difficult, isn't it, and that's a one out of three. You then get them to put their match inside a box of other matches and they see it, it's completely clean. And you shake it up just to mix them and you go look, you can do it. They pour their matches now visibly. There's nothing to hide.
Speaker 3:All of the matches now go in the bowl and you can have a lovely moment where you say and you can see yours in there, right, and they say they can Great. You then close your eyes or get someone to stand behind your head, blindfold, if you want to. And you now do this incredible. Your hand goes into the matches and you're just talking. I do it about a needle in a haystack and you're dropping matches through your hands and I get the audience to count from five to zero. So everyone's counting and it's like this chant going on and on zero. I go now and I catch it looks like I catch their match in the air. I go there good, there's no way. And they look and now they're signed match out of the thousand in the bowl. Hands are clean. There's no TTs, there's none of that. It's phenomenal. It's just.
Speaker 3:It's the perfect Darren trick that Darren didn't do and it's Andy's thinking of simplicity and practicality and story, and it's just because it feels well, it is real, it's an effect that you're doing what you're saying, that you're doing, and we have a way that I know what hand the match is in, which is a very lovely intro, so I can go. It's difficult, isn't it? Put it in your hand, let's try this a few times and then we can get it. That way. It also would bridge perfectly into something like lit.
Speaker 3:I thought for the longest time of putting an impossible object under the matches and, at the end of the show, setting it all on fire, and then the live camera picks up the huge flame and then, when the ashes die, the impossible object is now in the big jar. There's many ways it can go and many places that you can take it, but it's truly stunning, andy's phenomenal, and this is an example of why I think, and it got lost in that book and I love doing it well, I remember getting bulletproof many years ago when it first came out, and loving that trick in it.
Speaker 2:And then you're, you're correct. So it was recently republished in 11 years later, which was his most recent lecture notes, along with a phenomenal sneak thief with mobile phones Um, and you mentioned that Darren is the trick that Darren didn't do.
Speaker 2:He actually did something very, very similar with a coffee bean, so he had the coffee bean sign and mixed amongst all the others and he says I've got like this photographic memory, and then he plucks out the signed one, which feels very samey. But what I love about that choice is something that you said earlier on. You mentioned that there are moments of believability and you have these like little moments sprinkled throughout your performances and this is exactly that idea. It's a moment of it that could be real, that that was a skill-based trick. Um, so when you've performed it for people, the, the feedback after, do they think it's magic, do they think it's skill? What are the, the reactions of that sort of routine?
Speaker 3:uh, I only do it in the middle, so I don't end on it, I don't start on it. It's normally like a core effect, so we kind of move past it. People talk about it very often and say I love the match. I give them a little book that says the conjurer is a match book and we put it in there and they keep it as a takeaway, a souvenir. But I normally get I love the match routine or somebody will send me an Instagram photo of them holding it.
Speaker 3:I don't actually think completely opposite to the hummingbirds. I don't think it needs all the pomp and circumstance. I have someone stand behind me and hold my hands over my eyes just because I'm a little bit obsessed. But Tash does it as well. So it's quite nice that Tash will sit down and now she will be the one that gets blindfolded and I will stand at the other side of the room and have my hand out and it's just a moment, it's just fun, it just feels beautiful and there's nothing to worry about.
Speaker 3:So if you're listening or watching this thinking, well, I've just started. I don't really know. Technical knuckle busting moves Great. Don't worry about that. Let's get a hook. Let's get the audience to care. Let's get a narrative Like I honestly think the magic should be performed up here and not down here. Don't get me wrong. I love table card magic Phenomenal, but if you watch Shin Lim, he's here and he's doing the magic to you in the camera. Very rarely is he down on the table, and this is a perfect explanation of how to learn an effect like this. You're here, get a beautiful bowl, get a thousand matches and just perform it and have fun, and it's also a great trick. So how can you make it better in your own performance? Andy's is the best for him, but could you change it? Could it be a different item or a different object?
Speaker 3:has it got to be a bowl, could it be a bathtub, could it be bigger? Like how can you transition that to feel like your own?
Speaker 3:and it's a really nice little exercise and all thanks to andy so anyone with a spare bathtub, uh, work it into your show so we there, you can buy now cocktail bathtubs that you'd put champagne in and a bottle of champagne would fit into this bathtub and normally you'd put a little rubber duck on top and I have no tricks for this. But I've got one backstage and I keep thinking. You know it is again. It's a picture. If you're watching, if there's a playbill or a theater program and the Contras are in it and I'm holding a bathtub and it's smoking and there's matches in it, I'm invested. So yeah, how can we tweak these things and make them our own? But Andy's a phenomenon.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's a great choice and leads us very nicely into the tail end of your eight tricks. So you've got two more left. What did you put in your seventh spot?
Speaker 3:Well, it's a little bit of a story with this one. So I said at the very start of this our main favorite thing about being in Vegas is the people, and I genuinely, truly, truly mean it. I was sad that we didn't know magicians, truly, truly mean it. I was sad that we didn't know magicians. I had no magic friends. When I wanted to have late night Zooms and conversations, I had no one to talk to, tash and I would be in the car all the time, or planes or trains, and it sounds glamorous, but the stage is the fun part. All the rest is the work.
Speaker 3:And I went to the session convention and it was the first one that I'd ever gone to in London and this was not long ago, maybe, like I don't know, five or six years. I think it was one of their first ones, so maybe a bit longer than that. And as I went in, I saw Luke and Josh and everybody, mark Paul and I just wanted to talk to them. I didn't know how. I had no confidence, none. I didn't know I couldn't break the. Even now I feel it's weird, like because these are people that I admire and inspire to be like and I've learned the favorite things that I get to do. I'm so blessed to every day perform and it's because of people that I'm now standing with. So I went in and I didn't talk to anyone.
Speaker 3:I sat in the coffee shop all day and it was the year where David Berglaas was being. He was doing a private little show. He was the guest of honor and he walked by me and now we meet lots of people and it's great. But when David walked by, it was like I just see Michael Jackson. I couldn't believe it. He is, I mean so much. Maybe all of this I've just spoke about. He's in there somewhere and I went and sat in the venue and I watched a guy called Vincent Haddan and he did a thing called mental wine tasting and it floored me, it completely floored me. And I was sitting next to Mark Paul and I think Mark Paul is amazing and he was two chairs away from me and as I watched this wine tasting thing, I just let out. I couldn't help it, I didn't mean to, I just went wow, I love magic. And I looked at Mark and he said so do I, and it was the first time I had this connection with a magician and I sat there. For the rest, it sounds so stupid. So I apologize. It's not even a good story, but like it was kind of a bit of validation and it gave me a little bit of confidence and courage to go and speak to people. And now, well, I'm. This is why I love it here. So every post that you might see the conjurers do, it looks like we have to sell the show. But just know that I'm blessed to everyone who's listening to this right now. So thank you.
Speaker 3:But wine tasting it's. You have four glasses and there's nothing to see, nothing to find. You just say to four people think of your favorite drink, whatever you want, it doesn't matter, write it down, scrunch it up, drop it in these wine glasses. Then he mixes the glasses up or you can mix them up. He walks away and he goes right. I'm going to tell you what it is. He holds up the glass and he swills it around as if he's doing a wine tasting and he then opens it up sneak thief style and goes pina colada, that's yours, correct? Obviously you throw in some presentation there, but the premise is you now give them the drink and you do it three times and it builds an impossibility.
Speaker 3:Then the last one, sneak thief style. You say hold it, put it in between your hands like this, and I hold the glass as a connection and you reveal the drink. And now we have it. Where I get the drink to it, tash takes it under a thing, but you never see it. And now the drink is in the glass so they can keep the drink.
Speaker 3:But I the reason I love that trick so much is you fast forward five years and Tash and I headlined the Chicago Magic Lounge and there was loads of magicians in and we were partying backstage and we were part of the crew. I signed the wall and was just so just happy to be there. And Kayla Drescher does that trick at the Chicago Magic Lounge a beautiful version. She's added some stuff, which is great, and I looked around me and I'm now sitting in a booth with like 10 magicians and it was such a full circle moment. It's an incredible trick, but I'm just very grateful. So that was where the first time I ever thought you know what? I can maybe be friends with these people.
Speaker 2:And I'm very glad that I am. Well, I think that's a great story because I think everyone listening or I certainly hope everyone listening can relate to a moment like that in their career or in their life. Listening can relate to a moment like that in their career or in their life. I'm fairly sure that we've all at one point had that moment where someone says hello to us or we say hello to someone who we've spent, you know, years and years with and admired, um, the way that you have and I love the idea of just both of you it almost sounds like a sitcom in an absolute, like a magic sitcom. Right, have you stood there going god? I just love magic.
Speaker 3:And then mark paul going me too, yeah, yeah, and like he won't remember it, I don't think he might, I don't know. But I walked out just feeling I don't know that I'd like achieved something, because I was always. We'd work so hard on all of these effects and we'd do shows and then be really hopefully good, I think, but nobody would know. Nobody would ever know. Nobody knew what the countries were doing. So that was the first time I thought oh well, maybe there's now somebody in magic that knows us. Fast forward to 10 years later and now we're here talking to you.
Speaker 2:So it means a lot, and what I love about that particular trick as well, again, is something that you alluded to a little bit earlier on um. You mentioned with the whole bathtub thing about taking that trick on that premise and then making it your own, and that's sort of what's gone on here. It's it's like a sneak thief routine, but added to glass, and then then Andy has taken mobile phones and added it to mobile phones. So what I love is that maybe, maybe, after exploring it, someone's now going to come up with something even stranger. Maybe a version in bathtubs with bath bombs, yes, but like as you said, it.
Speaker 3:How cool is that you have four bathtubs and they're all bubbling and you pour in water but it looks like it's smelly kind of bath liquid, or you put in the bath bombs whatever you want and they can choose them off a shelf, and you've just reinvigorated and revitalized this beautiful routine and now maybe the whole audience write down their favorite scents, whatever like this is why I love magic, because of I would never have got to that without this conversation, and if we all talk, magic gets better and you'll be pleased to know that alakazam will be stocking bathtubs from next week after listening to this.
Speaker 3:I'll perform it here in vegas. We'll sell it. That'd Coming soon.
Speaker 2:So that leads us to number eight. So what was in your final spot?
Speaker 3:All right.
Speaker 2:As.
Speaker 3:I turn my notes around, try to be subtle, but it made a noise. I am going to pick the Kevin James floating rose and thank you, gannite. No, so the reason for the Kevin James floating rose is I first came to Vegas many years ago and I sat in the MGM grand Tash and I didn't have a lot of money and I remember looking at the David Copperfield meet and greet and being like I have to meet him, like, and we were trying to work out how we could do it and I I just had to do it. So anyway, we go in and Chris Kenner came up to us and Chris was like you can sit in a better seat if you want, I'll just move you. And I was like I stunned and maybe he heard. I don't know how he heard, but whatever, it doesn't matter. We managed to sit on this seat and midway through the show David performed the floating rose to us and for four minutes I was just a five-year-old child seeing the boy running out of the snow or whatever it may be, hearing that voice. And now I'm I think I can say I'm friends with David and we've sat many times and had many sushis and that moment is is maybe my most special moment in all of magic, because he didn't know me at all then. He had no idea who we were and I just got to see David perform and he's the greatest of all time. There is nobody alive today that walks on a stage and gives me the feeling that he does. Every magician I think should go and watch David's show. He's the greatest In a hundred years time. You see the wall behind me. There's everybody on it. David will be above, maybe beyond, all of them. So anyway, long story, but it made me have all the feels. It made me fall in love with magic a little bit more and watching it this close me fall in love with magic a little bit more and watching it this close.
Speaker 3:What, what an effect. It's a piece of tissue and you can do it to 3 000 people like, how cool is that? And the method's relatively not simple, but if you work on it you can get it. The first time I did it I did it with extra burned flash paper, nearly burned the house down, so make sure you get the right one. That was an error, but it's really great and Kevin's a master of making things look beautiful and if David does it.
Speaker 3:Just learn it. Just learn it so you know it, because one day, someday, you might get a gig where you think, oh, it's the perfect effect for this moment. Gig where you think, oh, it's the perfect effect for this moment, adding the smell to the rose. Producing the rose at the end hasn't got to be a rose, it could be anything, it could be a, a little dove, and then you produce a dove, whatever. Just yeah, it feels like disney magic in front of you, it's like cgi, but out of the mind of kevin james. So, yeah, I love it, kevin james. Rose is my number eight.
Speaker 2:That's really interesting as well because, like we said, we've done over 52 of these now and not many people I think we've had one or two have mentioned a trick that they love, just because that was the trick that made them fall in love with magic, or that was the thing that made them feel magical. I remember being a kid going to spain and seeing a magic show there and seeing the buzzsaw illusion for the first time and just being absolutely blown away and there was a woman next to me screaming, you know, freaking out, and saying, you know, putting back together. Um, strangely, a few years later I went back and she said the same thing how bizarre, um, strange, right, it's really odd. Um, but yeah, those moments, those tricks, it's really interesting that in everyone's sort of ultimate list of tricks, only a handful of people have said you know, this is the one that I would take because it made me feel magic again.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's that feeling of again watching david through a tv screen. He, just he's the king of captivation and the king of stories. All of my theatricality and storytelling is because one day, once upon a time, I watched David Copperfield and thought how can I even get to like 20% as good as you and to be a meter away from me and telling the story just here, and I forgot about the other 2,000 people however many is in that room and just sunk into it. Doesn't matter if it's David Copperfield or David that works in the shop near you, just make magic mean something. And we, we're so blessed, all of us, everybody in this community we get to make people have memories that will last a lifetime. And what a privilege and what an honor. And the rose effect.
Speaker 3:And it's Kevin's thinking, it's his beautiful brilliance that made this happen, just it's. It's a memory that person's always going to share and it's the perfect routine, for their reaction will amplify to the audience, because you're never going to get someone next to you and make something float and then, after it's floated, it animates. Then, after it's animated, it turns into the object and they can keep it. They're going to freak out and when they freak out, the audience freaks out and it has that domino ripple. It has that effect.
Speaker 3:And I don't even know if everybody should perform it, because I don't think it works for everybody's style, but I think everyone should learn it. I don't perform coins that often, but I learn coins because I can use a coin, move with a thumb writer or whatever it may be. So, yeah, it's really, really beautiful and I'll never forget that moment and I kind of I didn't mean to, as I said it, I kind of wanted to take it back, I didn't mean to throw David's name out like, oh, david, but like I've just been really really blessed and that moment will always mean the world to me.
Speaker 2:I think just a little honorable mention, thinking about what you were just saying. There was a great effect quite a few years ago now on the illusionist loops dvds. So they had a series of dvds that came out I think there were three or four of them and they had different artists basically put incredible tricks with loops on and on one of them was the danny garcia episode, so it was a whole dvd of like. As soon as I say danny garcia, you know, you know it's going to be amazing smile straight away.
Speaker 2:Yeah but he's got this wonderful routine where he borrows a note and he says think of an insect that flies, and they say a butterfly. And this note just starts to slowly morph into a butterfly, and then he sort of um, balances it on a butterfly, and then he sort of balances it on his fingers and then it becomes alive and it starts to flap its wings on its own.
Speaker 3:What an intro to hummingbirds.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you should check out. It's an amazing trick. And then he lets go of it and it floats. So the idea of at the end then taking that note, placing your hands over it, and when you lift it up it's a real butterfly that flies away, that would be an incredible ending. Isn't magic, the best thing in the world like it would be great.
Speaker 3:We literally get to do this for a job, like we get to make butterflies appear and things float and fly. Yeah, that's a great effect. Literally after this, I'm doing that, let's go catch some butterflies, let's go. Well, I think that's a great effect. Literally after this, I'm doing that, let's go catch some butterflies let's go well.
Speaker 2:I think that's a great list. We've got a a really diverse mix there. You've gone all the way from. You know chapters of mark spellman, gypsy balloon, uh, hummingbirds, blindfold at chair, routine, the burning. We've got mental wine tasting and floating rows. You've got a nice mix of sort of mentalism. Uh larger pieces. You've got some uh like with the gypsy blue and hummingbird, sort of nice sentimental pieces in there. I think it's a really lovely mix of different items thank you.
Speaker 3:I think you could make a show out of all of those eight. I'm not saying it'd be the best show, but you could structure something and a lot of them. I try to choose and pick because they can be pivoted. You can put your own spin on the majority of them.
Speaker 2:And if you did, you've got a breathtaking pieces of magic. But that does lead us on to the first ever banishment from our industry. So we're none of us are sure how this part of the podcast is going to go from here on in. So this is going to be really interesting. So what would you banish from our industry? What is the thing that if you were to bury it and it be gone forever, it would be gone well, I'm playing it safe.
Speaker 3:So I I think we're all going to agree this is not even like a. You know, when you see a Facebook post, I'm going to use the emotion box as the sort of explanation here. But when you see an emotion box and the size of five inches big, it drives me mental Even now. It's annoying me. Like let's not buy fake magic. Let's not, let's not put fake magic into the world. Let nobody do it. It doesn't matter. If you can't afford the trick, don't do the trick, find another trick. Let's not wow, it's gonna be a rant. I'm gonna. Let's not buy things. Master prediction chest, let's not get one that's got a base that's a foot big, like what we're doing, what we're thinking and if you see them on facebook, let's form a group, a little magic society, and let's go find these people.
Speaker 3:No, I just I hate it when I see we do a version of the emotion box and it's Natasha's trick in the show and she's added so much stuff to it. And when I see it for like $300, made out of MDF and it's spray painted white $100 made out of MDF and it's spray painted white. It's not fooling anyone. And if somebody buys that and does it, well, you've ruined it for all of us. If you're going to do the closing rows and you do it with rope I'm not sure why you would, but let's imagine that, for whatever reason, you couldn't get invisible thread Well, you've just ruined that moment, like you've just sport that trick for all of us. So let's not buy fake magic and let's not do things against how the creator envisioned it. That doesn't mean don't make it better, don't change it, don't tweak it. Of course you should, however you see fit, but what I'm saying is, if it's a detriment of the trick, don't do it. If you see someone's routine and you go, oh, that's good, I can make it, great, buy it. Then make it, because then you can learn how the person that's put weeks, months, years of their life into this effect wants it to be done. Then, when you've made it how they want, change it. Of course you should, but don't be like oh, I saw this trailer, I can. Well, let's buy it. Let's not buy a fake copy of it and let's do it properly.
Speaker 3:So that's kind of two things, but my overarching point is let's not buy fake magic. I know it might look good and you can throw it in a show, but just don't, because it's not going to look good, it's going to look awful. Everybody that's got a fake master prediction system just burn it like it's not. It's not, and there's many methods of and we could talk about a hundred of them right now. There's many methods of confabulation that don't need that box, and that box is brilliant if you get the real one, and if you don't, let's do something different. Let's be creative. Phone a magician, talk to something like yeah, it drives me mad.
Speaker 2:I see it all the time and I think it's really sad that so much stuff that we love and don't sleep over is just given away or bodged together and people buy it well, and even you know, we've a massive, massive rise, over sort of the last 10 years, of the rip off websites where they they will take just the instructions to the trick, post them for a ridiculously discounted price and then sell the secret on without the prop, which has never really made sense to me anyway, prop which has never really made sense to to me anyway.
Speaker 2:But it really causes a lot of um difficulty in lots of different ways though, especially for creators, because you would end up getting an email from someone saying look, I've bought your trick, but this is wrong, this is wrong and this is wrong or it's poor quality. And then, when they send you a picture through of the, the product, you realize it's absolutely not your product and someone has just scanned them and then reproduced their own version of it, but it does seem rife at the moment and it's so sad because it's all of the the moments that people don't think about.
Speaker 3:So if we was to sit right now and dissect my gypsy balloon, it's there's like 15 moments in there. But if you just watched me do it on a fake whatever it may be site or whatever, I'm not giving you any of the things that actually makes it beautiful and therefore, when you go and do it, it's not going to be beautiful because you haven't got the 15, 20 years that I've invested into it. So, and that's the same for every creator, everyone that sells something, if you buy Kevin James's floating rose, we'll watch and learn and do as Kevin James teaches and then and that's kind of a sort of separate segue branching tree point. But it all kind of comes under the same umbrella as let's just make magic good. And if we're going to do a magic trick, please let's not buy. I know it's tempting, I know sometimes you'll see something and go, oh, I can do a, an origami for a thousand dollars or whatever. But if the base is this big and the swords, what like? Let's just do good magic always.
Speaker 2:And that's kind of the end of the matthew pomeroy lecture well, I think that's going to be a good segment going forward. I feel confident after that that it will be a good thing to raise debate. But earlier on, at the very beginning, you said that you found the book the most difficult to pick.
Speaker 3:So let's go into it. What?
Speaker 2:did you go into.
Speaker 3:You can have honourable mentions, don't forget, OK well, my first book is my favourite book in all of magic, but I feel a bit unfair because it's out of print. I don't think you can get it. So my favourite book of all of magic is the David Burglass book. It's just phenomenal. It's the Mind and Magic of David Burglass by David Britland. It's got everything. Imagine right now that the greatest mind reader prior to Darren so the one before that, I just an amazing mind reader, um, released everything. It's got his piano vanish. It's got his blindfold drive.
Speaker 3:I did a podcast previously and I was asked my Mount Rushmore and I've regretted what I said every day since because I didn't mention David and he's definitely on there, maybe at the top, him, the two Davids they're there Burglass and Copperfield I. His book's incredible, but it is out of print and it's very expensive. So if you find it at a magic convention, buy it and grab it and hold on it. But I don't know if that's fair because it's very hard to get, but it's great. So that was my honorable mention. Also, morgan Westbrook phenomenal.
Speaker 3:Let me just reel a few off Morgan Westbrook incredible. I just love them. I think they're so, so good and talented and their ideas are perfection. Piff's book is great. It's really great. Even things like how to use a GoPro and the fisheye lens and the tricks are fine, but don't do them because they're his, but make your own versions from what he teaches. But just the expertise is brilliant.
Speaker 3:But I and this I've got, honestly, a list of books, but I think I'm gonna go with the method of the method to my madness by Jonathan Goodwin. That's my book and it's available now on his site. There's only 300, I believe, and they will sell out. But that guy he's really great. He's really really great and he's got so many incredible ideas and I really love him and I think that he's been so kind to Natasha and I in many, many ways and his book should be read and he should be listened to and, yeah, he's brilliant. So, yeah, the method to my madness everyone buy it. Just buy it, just because you should. The tricks are amazing. His thought process, his story, his journey, the pictures are incredible. It's got everything in there and he's one of the good guys in magic. I think, yeah, that'd be my choice and I would love it if everybody bought one.
Speaker 2:I think what's interesting about the choices that you've just said and maybe you've not thought about this, maybe you have, but you went for piff's book, david burglars's book, um, and morgan and west's book all of those, and jonathan goodwin, of course, but all of those are almost like diaries of performers. Right, because it's about their experience in the industry just as much as it is about the tricks, right? So I'm guessing that is your, uh, your sort of love when it comes to magic. It's the, the stories of performers throughout history yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3:So darren's books on here as well. Obviously, darren's phenomenal and I couldn't put it down. I couldn't stop reading the book. It's the book where he's on tour. It's just great. And there's some tricks in there that are brilliant as well. His ring flight is amazing. But just to hear him in cafes writing, I love it. It makes me feel like I'm on the road. So but yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 3:I, to be completely truthful, magic to me is a way to get to the hook and the story and the audience. I'm going to be locked into a room with a thousand strangers. How can I make them care? All of us can do tricks and we can learn tricks and do tricks and that's all fine and good and great. But how? And your are a great example of this.
Speaker 3:I've watched all of the shows that you've done terrifying to booze, etc. And they're they're great, because it doesn't matter what the trick is, the trick's fine, the trick's a trick. And watch bgt. All they've got talent. There's a million tricks. But how do we make them gasp and lean forward and breathe deeply and feel scared and feel happy? And I want an emotional roller coaster. If you watch a movie and the movie makes you feel nothing. Not a good movie, all the best songs that you hear will hit a chord sad, happy party dancing, whatever. So I think magic has to hit those beats.
Speaker 3:And the books that I've mentioned. They give you the full rounded picture of the performer and I think that that really shows you the insights of off the stage, like how to not get nervous, how to stay planted, not move around, how to talk on a microphone. All of these things are the real magic, because a trick is a trick is a trick and it's good to have great tricks and perform them well, of course, but that doesn't make you a good performer. Performing is different to presenting, I think. And all of the books I mentioned. If you just take a little kind of nugget from all of them, it will really help. But help me at least learn some performance skills.
Speaker 2:Well, I would say that perfectly reflects your list as well.
Speaker 2:If you look at the the list, you've got so many peaks and troughs all the way through those moments. You've got that sort of high impact, high energy chair routine and you've got like the tense moment of the burning Will he get that match? Will he not? Building up that tension.
Speaker 2:And then you have these really lovely sentimental moments like gypsy balloon, and then you've got this really immersive thing when you were talking about the bird cages and the feathers coming down of hummingbirds. You've just got so many lovely high energy moments and then sort of these whimsical moments that are fairy tale like, and then these really sentimental relaxing moments as well, all the way through the show. So it shows that your show, your Vegas show, I'm guessing I hope I get to see it one day, but I'm guessing I would love to see it, especially after seeing this list. But there must be so many moments of just this bang. Let's get the audience going, let's get them riled up, and now let's make them care about something, let's make them think about this thought or this idea or this concept, and then let's bring them into our world.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I love theatre, so theatre is my kind of core for everything and I read as many theatre books and musical theatre, lighting books, technician book like how can you learn everything? But in one of the effects in the show I put on a wind machine but they can't hear it. The room gets cold and I want them to put their coats on and I want that uncomfortableness. If you go and watch ghost stories of Andy Nyman, when the hospital scene happens you smell that clinical smell. It's theater. There has to be a theatrical arc, there has to be a narrative and I think that's the same if you're going around doing close-up magic. If you go to a table, well, let's do table theater. How can we make them care? Even if it's four minutes, it's great, card goes in back to the top, but make that mean something like how can you maybe if you take a picture of them, a polaroid picture, and now it's their picture that keeps coming back? Because whatever, it doesn't matter, but I'm not saying change every trick.
Speaker 3:I think the point that I believe the most and feel the strongest about is the audience has to have an experience from the second a ticket is purchased to, when they sit back at home and leave a review. That experience begins and ends. The show is the middle point. So all of our team I speak to them every day wear the right clothes, smell a certain way, the music in the foyer, the drinks that we serve. Afterwards the music changes because I want their feeling to be different. All of these things create magic for me, and quote-unquote, magic is the effects, great. But imagine if you just got them to care. And if they care, then they come back and that's all.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and talking to you is a joy because you do this effortlessly and it's it's watching performers and forgetting the tricks. Like it's great. But how many can you have? Like, at some point I know you obviously buy more magic, go to Alakazam and buy stuff, but at some point you've got, I think. Focus on, if I sat this guy on a hard seat on the stage or for the close-up, he's going to feel uncomfortable Great. So let's do a trick that makes him feel more uncomfortable. Or let's put him in cushions. He's going to feel cozy. Let's do something with bubbles, whatever it is Like. How can we take every moment and amplify it, not just the magic, everything. And that's where real magic lies for me.
Speaker 2:Well, I think the magic is the illustration to the story in the book. Should I say right? So you have this book, you're reading it, it's an incredible story. And then you have this very simple image that just makes your brain go ah, that's what that thing is. And earlier on you mentioned Derek Dal. Ah, that's what that thing is. And earlier on you mentioned Derek Dalgadio's In and of Itself.
Speaker 2:And I think there's a beautiful, probably my favourite moment in the show with the brick and he says you know, you see this as just a brick right now, but I'm going to tell you something that's going to make you see this completely different. And then you know, without spoiling too much, he. He then says but now this is a weapon. Now it means something completely different to you, and I think a lot of the time that's what we're doing, not just with props. We're changing the, the way people see the world sometimes, and I think that's what magic does in a roundabout way. Not only is it just an illustration of a story, but it makes people see things differently, even if for just two minutes, and whether that is them scared or happy or upset, it doesn't matter, it's just an experience for them.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So we're doing some consultancy at the minute and that's the entire reason that we're there is to find those moments, and I think that you might listen. Somebody might listen to this and say, well, yeah, but great. And I think that you might listen. Somebody might listen to this and say, well, yeah, but great, I haven't got a theater or I haven't, but there was a time where Tash and I lived in our car. There was a time where we literally sold everything to come to like.
Speaker 3:It's not this illusion of grandeur, it's. You can make magic in your front room, like before we was Vegas. I was in a cabin on a ship or backstage in a theater or in Times Square. Wherever we were, it doesn't matter. It hasn't got to have lights and screens and smoke and smells. You can do things yourself, you can. And it hasn't got to be money either. It's not this thing of well, I can't afford it. Just get some paper and do an, add a number and make it link to a billboard or whatever. It doesn't matter. Magic's the best, I think. I think about it from the second I wake up to when I go to bed, and I know that we all do and I just I want them to leave caring and I think they can and when they do, it's a memory they'll have forever. It's the best.
Speaker 2:Well, that's a lovely segue into our final selection. So this is your item. This is the non-magic item that you use for magic. It's the curveball curveball, because we never know what's going to happen here. So what did you put in your item?
Speaker 3:Well, I think it's been said before In fact I know it has but for me it has to be music. I can't. I have music on all the time. When I'm writing a show, I have music on and I change the music and choose the music to fit the theme and the feel. There's an underscore to everything we do. Music can change everything. It's overused and oversaid. But watch a movie with the sound off, it doesn't matter. If you watch it with the sound on it, it hits you.
Speaker 3:There's some music that I listened to, like Vegas is the best and I'm so happy to be here, but I miss home, like I miss my grandma. She's 90 and I love her and I want to see her and be with her, and every New Year's Eve I normally sit with her and hold her hand and we watch the fireworks on the telly. And this year I was here and it was amazing. But I hear a piece of music and it just takes me straight back to England and back to a little village sitting with my grandma with a cup of tea watching Coronation Street. And music can pull at heartstrings and it can. It can change the dynamic of everything. There's a moment in our show where we get scary and we get spooky and we go blackout and ring. A ring of roses starts, but like this weird orchestral slow version and I hear the screams before they've seen anything. And that's not me or the tricks, that's just the feel in the room and that's all music.
Speaker 3:I work with music constantly. I'm writing music, running music, gym music. The soundtrack of my life is music. I remember now the song that David had when he was doing the rose. Like it's, music adds this connection to the moment, makes it cement, it, makes it solidify in your mind. So I know it's not the best answer, but I really can't imagine doing a show or performing like the hummingbirds. I've got the track being made and I can't wait for that car to rise and the music to lift. Like music to me is as important to me personally as the magic, because it it helps, aid it so much yeah, no, I don't think that's a a cop out at all.
Speaker 2:I think it's absolutely true and I think music can change the context of things quite quickly and easily. And I remember years ago there was a very crude example, but it was like someone wrote on a piece of paper. It was like the word I've been keeping an eye on you and there was, like this, really lovely poetic music in the background. It's really romantic and the idea was you know, I've been keeping my eye on you and then they changed the music and it was like a really creepy, scary music. And then you read it back. I've been keeping an eye on you, but with that music, suddenly everything changes meaning in the moment of that music. So I think it's absolutely right.
Speaker 2:I do think that music can change the vibe of a trick and they always say that you should have a sentence. So each trick is a sentence. So write down your show and write down a sentence and then get your music choices and play the music and just read out that sentence and then change it to the next track. Read out and you'll start to realise that, as you're explaining it, the music will change the meaning of what you're reading out in terms of the routine.
Speaker 3:For sure. In our first theatre show that we toured, like a year after Tash and I started working together, we had envelopes and every time one was opened the music would change exactly what you just said. One would be uplifting and then one would be sad and then one would be scary, and the reaction on the person's face opening the envelope would change because of the music behind them. And I think it's a really important thing to think about. If you're going to do a stage show, even if it's in a working man's club, if it's on Zoom, if it's in the front room, it doesn't matter, even close up, why not? Why not try and do I don't know, a tossed out deck? Whatever you're going to do, but just put different songs on because you're going to feel different things, and then you might go, hang on. That felt right and then you can go. Okay, that was hip hop. If it's for you, great. And then you find your through line through that.
Speaker 3:Again, it doesn't mean every trick should have music. Sometimes silence is golden. There are moments the match, for example. I am silent, I want you to hear the wood fall, I want that rhythmic kind of ethereal feel. But there are other times, like the hummingbirds, where the soar of the music will just make everything elevate. So yeah, this has been so fun. I've loved this. The last thing is music for me.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's an incredible list. We've gone from chapters of Mark Spellman, gypsy Balloon, hummingbirds, the Blindfold Act, chair Routine, the Burning Mental, wine Tasting Floating Rose. Your Banishment is Fake Magic, your Book is the Method to my madness by jonathan goodwin and your item is music. What a great list. Thank you for having me. I've honestly loved this. Uh well, it's been great to finally have you on. I know we've been trying for a little while to get you on um, but if people want to find out more about you, your shows, where to find you? I know that you said you're coming to the UK as well. Where can they find out all of that information?
Speaker 3:Well, we're performing a few private things in London. However, I would quite like to come and do an hour little lecture or something, somewhere I don't know, it's not booked yet, but Cabin of Wonders, las Vegas, six days a week. If you've listened to this podcast, then just send me a message. Instagram at the conjurers. If you're in Vegas, reach out, I will sort of take it out for you. Get your free VIP upgrade. Let's have coffee after. Let's talk magic. I'm around to jam and available.
Speaker 3:If you're at magic, live as well. Come and see the show. Come on in. I hope you like it. We change it all the time.
Speaker 3:I'm always consistently working and trying to put new things in and tweak things, and you're all more than welcome. Also, instagram at the country is where the majority of our stuff is. We don't really post to YouTube because we try and keep it this secret thing when you come in the room. But if any magicians are where I was when I reached out to Mark, reach out to any of us because everyone's lovely and what a great community to be part of and I think all of us just want good magic. So if you're struggling, ask someone.
Speaker 3:I actually I watched a thing with Pete the other day and Harry, and they said about maybe doing classes where you can pay for a Zoom. Well, even if you're not working on magic, just pay for a Zoom about how to walk out on a stage, how to hold a microphone, all of these things. We live in a time where these things are so accessible and we're so blessed to use them. So let's all join forces and continue to inspire and create wonder in our audiences well, I think that's a great closing gambit.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, matthew, for your time. It's been a a joy talking to you and to find out a bit more about your thoughts behind magic and, of course, being the first person to banish, which is exciting as well thank you for having me.
Speaker 3:What a treat. Keep up the amazing work and thank you for doing this podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you, matthew. And of course you guys know we do have Stranded with a Stranger, which is your opportunities to send in your list. So please do send them in Sales at alakazamcouk. Do go check out Matthew's show.
Speaker 3:I will definitely be seeing it one day wherever it may be, um, because it sounds phenomenal and the show is as much. Natasha, she is a phenomenon I am in, I stand in the wings every day and all those things we spoke about the crying, the laughing, all of that she makes me, and the audience, feel she's a powerhouse and I couldn't do it without her. And uh, yeah, the Conjurers is as much, if not more, her than me and together, hopefully, we do something fun.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe we need to get Natasha on. Maybe she can come onto the podcast and we can get her thoughts on things as well. She'd love that. So thank you guys for listening. We'll be back next week, of course, with season two, episode two of Desert Island Tricks. You would have thought, after 52 I would have remembered the name of that now. Thank you guys very much and we'll see you next week. Goodbye for now.
Speaker 1:Hi, peter Nardi here and I really hope you enjoyed that podcast. I just wanted to make you know that Alakazam have their own app. You can download it from the App Store or the Google Play Store. By downloading the app, it will make your shopping experience even slicker. At Alakazam, you'll also get exclusive in-app offers and in-app live streams. So go download it now and we'll see you on the next podcast.