A bold claim – but true. Not a brilliant new gimmick. Not a new routine from the Vernon archives. Not something requiring a big investment but a proven procedure that does really work. Group magic. Vernon and the greats used it. Fred Kaps used it.Peter Warlock, Jack Avis, Francis Haxton and other names used it. [...]
Posted on October 21st, 2009 by John
Filed under: Magic Ideas, Magic Miscellanea, Magic Thoughts | 2 Comments »
HAVEN’T SAID MUCH ON THIS BLOG FOR THE PAST FEW MONTHS.. No particular reason other than I was pumping out news and trivia almost on a daily basis and I think this could devalue the content of the information. There’s too much info around today in my view. Therefore I will only release news that I [...]
Posted on August 4th, 2009 by John
Filed under: Magic Miscellanea | 3 Comments »
RECENTLY I WROTE THAT I WAS GOING TO PUT OUT a monte routine originated by Jack Avis that involved three like cards and a queen that mysteriously appears and disappears during the effect. In itself it’s very good as Jack showed it to me but I did it for a close friend, Tom Whitestone (an excellent magician [...]
Posted on December 8th, 2008 by John
Filed under: Magic Ideas, Magic News | No Comments »
A FEW GAPS IN THIS BLOG but we are now back on stream and able to announce that shortly we shall be releasing two new routines. One is just about the best Mix and Mingle trick I have ever found in many years – I use it all the time. Very visual and it looks impossible I [...]
Posted on November 13th, 2008 by John
Filed under: Magic News | No Comments »
IN GOING THROUGH SOME OF THE PERSONAL EFFECTS JACK AVIS left me, I have found a whole mass of new notebooks in which are recorded many of his original thoughts on card and close-up effects with many routines, ideas and exchanges with some of the world’s greats. Give me a little time but what I [...]
Posted on October 19th, 2008 by John
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I’M OFTEN ASKED WHO WAS THE GREATEST CLOSE-UP MAGICIAN I’ve ever seen? Well, I can go back fifty years and give you my opinion acknowledging that by reputation alone there were obviously some greats in the period before my time. I thinking here of Nate Leipzig and Max Malini and whilst I know that time [...]
Posted on August 23rd, 2008 by John
Filed under: Magic Biographies, Magic Miscellanea | No Comments »
THAT’S EXACTLY THE REMARK MADE BY ED. MARLO when Jack Avis sent him a John Derris effect in one of the hundreds of letters they exchanged for nearly thirty years. Fame indeed and perhaps a sentiment shared by many magicians. For John Derris is not a name in the heady firmament of the stars of magic [...]
Posted on August 18th, 2008 by John
Filed under: Magic Biographies | No Comments »
I STILL HAVE MANY OF JACK’S NOTES that he compiled over the years filled largely with original card effects and moves plus notes on things he had seen at meetings and conventions. Many of these require detailed drawings of the set up for the effect but perhaps I’ll work some of these out later..However, amongst [...]
Posted on June 21st, 2008 by John
Filed under: Magic Ideas | No Comments »
FOR YEARS I RESISTED PERFORMING the ambitious card effect. It’s such a good trick that everybody was doing it but I found that the magical impact was such that I could just not leave it out of my close-up programme. The routine I finished with is part classic, part Vernon, part Pat Page and for the [...]
Posted on May 30th, 2008 by John
Filed under: Magic Ideas, Magic Thoughts | No Comments »
THERE ARE MANY GHOSTS IN MAGIC. People who are heard but not seen. People buried in the scenery of the magic landscape. People who make a tremendous contribution to the intellect of magic by their profound thinking and creativity often stimulated by their isolation from the magic tribe. People who rarely or never perform magic in [...]
Posted on May 26th, 2008 by John
Filed under: Magic Biographies, Magic News, Magic Reviews | No Comments »
