All Alone by David Regal. Live Review (plus Hidden Gems. Eddie McColl's Pass Project. Giveaway)

Hello, I think we're live. I think we might be live. I think we're live. I still don't know when we're live. It says we're live and then it says we're not and then I don't know, but hello, hello. It's a perfect start to a perfect review show. Good evening if you're in the UK, everybody. Good morning if you're in lots of other places, afternoon, wherever you are, but welcome to Real Magic Review. Let me just check over here, make sure everything is set up correct because I've got to readjust everything so I can see you. And hi, Tom, hi, Ryan, hi, Gregory, hi, Pascal. Thank you for coming. It's amazing how much stuff is going on online. So I'm just amazed everybody turns up. There's so much stuff going on. I missed a couple of lectures this week that I'd love to have been in and watched, but I just don't have time. So thanks so much. Hi, Stephen. Hi, Dane. And hi, Anton. And I'm gonna try not to look at the screen. I keep looking at the screen, but it's bigger. I'm trying to look at my phone, which I know looks grossly unprofessional, but I'll just tell you what we're gonna do. I wanna mix things up a little bit. I want to start adding maybe a couple of things to the show. And I thought of doing a little bit maybe of a roundup. I've got lots of stuff to review and I'm not finding the time to do whole review shows on each thing at the moment. So I thought I'd kind of round up a couple of things that people give me, things that have stuck out, maybe at the beginning or the end of every show. Let me know what you think. Give me some feedback. I presume you can hear me okay, because I would... Yeah, oh yeah, there's an ad at the beginning, isn't there? Because you would have told me. So a couple of things I picked up in the last few months, one of which I found over there. I'm not gonna do a full review of this. I just think it's a really nice thing. I was just tidying up my office and I came across this thing and I thought, oh, he gave me that and it's really cool. And then I looked through it and it's great. And it's slightly dangerous. This is Hidden Gems by Mark Elsdon. And Mark Elsdon's published this small booklet just with the idea of, you know, you go for all these, you don't know where to start. So he's taken his, you know, he's got a massive book collection and a huge reader, Mark, and kind of highlighted the tricks that he's found that are kind of Hidden Gems. And I started looking through this and already I'm looking at stuff and going, oh, I better buy that book because it's got that trick in it. It's not like, why can't I just say, oh, watch him, haven't got that, but I'll do that one. It's this awful thing that some of us have got that we just want to start, you know, start buying all the things we haven't got as if we haven't got enough. I've got to be more stoic about this and be happy with what I've got, but there's some brilliant stuff in this. I think a couple of things that are magazines, but stuff out of Session by Joel Givens. There's one out there. There's one from Jack Parker, 52 Memories. And what he does is he gives you a kind of paragraph on each one, just say why he likes it, why he thinks it's a great trick. And it's really made me want to kind of go through each one of these, get the books off the shelf and learn this stuff. And I just think that sort of thing is just really, really useful for a lot of us. It just gets that analysis paralysis and don't know where to start. So that is one thing I've really enjoyed looking at again. Another thing in this roundup, it's kind of a new thing, isn't it? It's a new, what do they call it, a feature, is I, Eddie McColl, who, I've got something to review of his, a project. I really like Eddie McColl's stuff because it's just really down to earth. This is the material. It doesn't go on phrases like I do. It just gives you the solid work. And he's done the past project. And I watched that the other evening. It was really late. I was going to go to bed and I thought, no, I'll check that out. Because the past is something that we've all, every time I look at the past, I've got to pick up my cards and do it. The past is something that we all, a lot of us, work on again and again. And it's nice to see someone that is known to be very, very, very good at it, break it down for us. And he's got a few different pasts. He's got a riffle past. He's got this kind of classic, version of the classic past, which is nice and slow. And I think he's got a, he's got another past. He's got like a Marlowe past. I can't remember what it's called. But it's not really a full review, so I can get away with not remembering what it's called. But he, I really, I did it. And then I recorded my past, a version of my past, this really nice, slow one. And on film, it looked really good. And that's very rare for me. I usually, I can see every tale. And I thought, it kind of improved my past, wasn't it? It was only about 20 minutes or something. I don't know exactly what it was. It didn't feel like something I had to sit down for nine hours and watch. It was a really nice experience to sit there with Eddie and watch that. So two things that I found this week that I just thought I'd share with you. And I'll try and do that every week when I explore whatever I explore from my shelves or from my DVDs and downloads. And share with you. But we'll get on with it. It's a late one, it's a late intro, but welcome to Real Magic Review. My name is Steve Faulkner, and I'm gonna be reviewing, I just realized I haven't got it in the box. It was all tatty. All Alone by David Riegel. That was a bit like, you know, sometimes you watch something on Netflix or you watch an episode of something. And you know, most things that you watch, if you're watching a series, it has a bit of what happened last time. So either Walking Dead or something like that. And then it starts, and then one little thing happens. There's a bit of a teaser, and then the credits come up, the opening credits. And sometimes you watch something for like 25 minutes or however, and then the opening credits come in. It's a really weird thing. Sometimes it's literally like halfway through the thing. And that was a bit like that one. I sort of rambled on for ages. And did that a bit late. So, you know, it's life. Someone said there was a comment on one of my reviews. It was on ID360 this week. Somebody commented and said something like, dude, you've got to get on with it. I can't even watch it anymore. You just ramble too much or something like that. And I thought, fair enough. So sorry about that. And again, to questions afterwards, have a little look at what you've written. But this is an interesting one because I reviewed Interpreting Magic. And after reading that, I thought that was a real, with that and Approaching Magic, I was thinking, what else has David Riegel got? I mean, there's so much in those books. Why has he released that and this other thing? And that's got sort of a website. And then, well, this is a, obviously it's a gimmick deck. It's a one-trick deck. So that's why he's released it. And it's something that he's been working on apparently for about 15 years. He came out with a trick called Alone, which used Equivoke, which I'm going to start saying now because I was told why it was Equivoke and not Equivocate the other day. But Equivocate sounds so much better, doesn't it? But he used, he had a version with Equivoke and this has no Equivoke in it. It has, it's a very, very clean trick. And it's a trick we will be familiar with because anybody names a card and you will, you know, they name a card and let's say they name the 10 of clubs and you show that it's the, obviously they don't name it as you're spreading it through, they can sort of. You show it's the only card face up in the deck, which will be familiar to a lot of us. But then you show that all the rest of the cards are blank. So that's this added thing. So the first thing people are going to say is Invisible Deck because everybody does. And David does go through the history of this trick, starting with the Ultramental Deck, the Invisible Deck, then the Brainwave Deck, which this has the most sort of similarities to, I suppose. And then this, and obviously there's been a lot of versions of this. He talks about different versions with different kickers. And it is a very interesting history. I think it's worth looking at, looking, breaking down the effects a little bit. So if you don't know, and I think a lot of people won't because there are new magicians on here, the Invisible Deck is, you spread the, anybody names any card, which is a beauty of it. You've got the cards on the table. They name any card, you pull the cards out of the box and their card is face down in the face up deck. So I don't actually do it. So I always forget what way it is. Great trick. So many of us do it. So clean, so many different ways of doing it. So many presentations around it. And it's very versatile, such a simple idea, but so, so versatile with plots and things like that. Then the, I saw that as a lay person and it completely blew me away. But this is interesting. And then quite soon after that, I saw Brainwave. Now, a lot of people say Brainwave is weaker because it's kind of this too perfect principle. It's kind of, couldn't be. And as a lay person, I remember being really, like, I remember seeing Invisible Deck and going, yeah, that's really good. I remember seeing Brainwave and going, I can't get that out of my head. That's just how, that I couldn't unpack anything because they didn't know about what we know now as magicians. Really important to remember that, because we do forget. In the Brainwave deck, if you don't know, the card is face up in a face down deck. Same as that, you pull the card out and it is a different colour bag, which any card, it's just absolutely amazing. Attributed to Vernon originally, but he's said that it wasn't his, and there's, again, different versions of it. Great trick. This is very similar to that, but the plot's different, if you will, because the card itself doesn't change. It's the rest of the deck that changes. And if you think about this, there's a lot of ways of presenting this, isn't there? You can present it as a prediction. I came out, I've got one card, and I know what card you're gonna see. Obviously, that's not your scripting. And you go through it and show that all the rest of the cards are blank. So you've almost sort of pre-prepared it as a prediction. Or you can do a presentation where you click your fingers and the rest of the cards vanish. Or David does this lovely presentation with a tree, the idea of a tree and all the leaves of a tree, but now you can build a story around this stuff. And that's important because it is one trick. So you're gonna have to think about what you do with this. On the good side, it's a really clean trick. It's the rule of three, isn't it? Three things happen in this trick. And if you know about comedy, and Tom asked a question about comedy, well, it's not just comedy, it's everything. It's the rule of three. It's the magic rule of three, is things just feel nice in threes, beginning, middle, and end. We've got, you choose a card, the card is face up, then the kicker is the rest of the cards are blank. Three phases, nice and easy to remember. You know, the golden rule is that if someone can describe what happened, and they will, it's not a contrived trick, it's a very, very simple idea, which makes it, I think, unarguably quite a strong trick. I don't think many people could feel that and say it's not very strong. So it works plot-wise. It's very easy. There's practice required. It's not self-working. If you've done invisible deck, you'll know it's a similar principle, but there's an added thing, which means you can't replicate it with anything else. There is a, it's very easy. You're gonna have to practice it. You're gonna have to kind of get a bit familiar with certain things, where certain things are, if I can say that. But there's no memory work, nothing like that. There are no angles. You can do this absolutely anywhere. And I really do think that pretty much anybody could do this trick. On the, I'm just trying to think of anything I remember. Oh yeah, and I think one of the things is it's blank cards. And I've said this with all blank card trick, and it really made me realize it after Andy Nyman mentioned it on a podcast, is the tricks with blank cards are just really magical. There's something really surprising about seeing a deck that's completely blank. It's very aesthetically pleasing, I think. So it's got that to it. The only, I think the challenges are with this, as there are with everything, it is only one trick, as the invisible deck is only one trick. So it's not, I think it is versatile in plot. It's not versatile in loads of different tricks you can do with it. Another challenge is that you can't take the card out. To, you know, you sort of show the card, and then you show the blacks. Now my feeling is that once you show the backs, that's kind of the trick, and they're gonna respond to that. But you very clearly demonstrate it. But you don't want them taking it out, messing around with it. So that's another thing. And I suppose, I don't think there's anything, no. Oh, I did write down it's Phoenix cards. So if you don't use Phoenix, you know, but again, you're probably gonna do this as a piece on its own. But it is card shark. I didn't even mention it at the beginning. I'm so sorry. It's a card shark trick. So Christian has put this out with David. And David has said that Christian has quite a lot to do with how, you know, he came up with a lot of the ideas of what he could do with this. Cause they went through different ideas of things that card shark make, and go, maybe you could do that. And actually it's a very clever, very elegant way of doing that. And there is quite a lot more to it than you think. It's not, it's one thing that you may guess as a magician, but there are another couple of things that make it really, really workable, really, really easy, and very self-contained. It's a self-contained trick. You don't have to bring anything in, bring anything out. There's none of that going on. You can do it, show it, and put it down. Now you, you can't, it's a good and bad thing, really. It's in the hands, really. It's an in the hands trick. Now you can do a kind of semi spread on the table. You can't really sort of do a really long, nice spread. But what you can do, is you can show them, I actually had a bit of video, but I forgot to cut it in and get it ready for the cutting. You can show the cards, you show the back, show the front, it gets a response, and then you can kind of, kind of put it on the table and sort of half spread them, but move them around a bit. It's very fair looking. It doesn't look like you're kind of hiding anything, and you're not really, but you're just having to be a bit conscious of how you do that. And these are jumbo index as well, you might have noticed, which is really nice for parlor. I think this is a really nice parlor trick, actually. Phoenix are quite good with parlor, aren't they? The fact you can show them, turn them up like this, show they're all black or blank, that's the trick. And then, then you're kind of done. So I think it's, it's a really nice solid, you know, if you like that effect, that's the effect. There's nothing hidden. It's well-made, it's sturdy. Now, card show do a lot of stuff with a certain type of playing card that you might not know. This isn't that. And the type of playing card they sometimes use, I really like, but they can, I worry that with constant, constant, constant use, they might start getting a little bit damaged. This is very sturdy. It feels like it's got weight to it. And you're gonna be able to do it again and again and refresh certain things if you have to. There is a couple of minutes set up. I was so glad because I saw there was a set up and I thought, oh, I've really struggled with time at the moment, especially this morning. And I saw that the set up video was two and a half minutes and I was overwhelmed with joy when it was done in real time and you did it along with Christian. So it's a two and a half minute set up, basically. It's not even that, so you're fine. David does the explanation, does the demo, Christian does the set up. And the demo video is very, very short. It's only 12 minutes. So you've got something you can pretty much take out and do straight away here. It isn't gonna take you much time at all. I'm gonna finally remember to tell you the cost. I think it's about 32 pound. So 35 euros, I think, on Cardshark's website. And I'll put the links below. About 35 quid, 32 quid, 30 quid everywhere else, whatever. But that's kind of what you're paying, which I don't think is a bad cost. It's gonna last you a very long time. If you like the effect, you're gonna be able to do it. And it's great. So thank you very much. I will mention, by the way, go and see Card Magic Course for Gold. That'll be good. Like and subscribe. Just came to me head for some reason. So I'm gonna have a look at questions here on my phone. Yay. So we go to the... It's a little bit of rambling that makes it more authentic than honest. Yeah, thank you. It's David Regal. You know it's well scripted and has been run through the real world. Yeah, and that is, I mean, David Regal, he doesn't release a lot of tricks, does he? I mean, he does, but he's not like, you know, pumping them out every week. So I do like, you know, nearly everything he's done, I really, really like. I don't get the feeling he's someone that really needs to put a magic trick out that isn't that great just for money or anything like that. So there is a trust there as well. Why do self-working card tricks get looked down upon, especially if they're a great way for people with dexterity issues to get into card magic? Where do you stand on magicians like John Bannon? That's from Thomas. I have nothing at all wrong with self-card tricks, and there is no such thing as a self-card trick. If you give me a choice between performing a self-card trick and a sleight-of-hand trick, I'll look at the effect and look at what I want to get across with it. I actually sometimes find it more difficult to perform self-working card tricks because you've got to think of the performance. You can't just do them. Some are so strong that you can, but whereas now I've been doing sleight-of-hand for so long, it's easier to get a card out of my pocket than it is to think about routine. So, you know, I recently did the Big Blind Media self-working card trick DVD, one of theirs, and I thought it's some great stuff on it, really interesting, and I don't, I think process can be great. I think it creates theater. You know, a process is, you know, if you deal the cards there, deal them there. And again, I was watching Danny, Danny, Danny, Danny Daughters, his first DVD the other day, and he's got that great mathematic trick, that fake math trick, which is kind of self-working, but it's just so well done. You just have no idea. It's called a mathematical trick or something like that, but it's, yeah, so nothing wrong with that. It's all snobbery, it's all nonsense, and brilliant if you've got dexterity issues, or if you just don't want to learn sleight-of-hand, if you're more into the performance of it. You know, it's all right, isn't it, to do that? You know, you're still a magician if you're doing a magic trick. You get a lovely kicker with Brainwave, and you get a kicker with this, it's just different, but that Brainwave is a lovely kicker. Psychic CPA, you've just predicted a freely chosen card, pretty shocking by itself. Absolutely, I see, and perhaps under, sorry. I undersell that, but for me, to be able to confirm no sleight-of-hand by having that kicker as a final nail, maybe it's a presentation thing. I think the no sleight-of-hand thing is, yeah, I mean, it's a good selling point, isn't it? You don't have to worry about it. If you're on stage, if I'm doing it, it is a good point. I would never, most of my tricks, I wouldn't demonstrate live on YouTube because of fear of exposure, and that's a big audience. A lot of people are gonna see this. You know, a lot of people, to me, it's more than 100 people, are gonna see this. If I expose someone else's trick, it's really bad. Even doing that, then I was kind of nervous, so if I'm in a situation where I have to get 100%, I want something with no sleight-of-hand, be great, or something that hasn't got loads and stuff to remember, which, for me, is actually harder. I was looking for new opinions. Yeah, very easy to grow stale with a routine, so nice to have input, absolutely. Do you have Memorandum from Woody Allen? No, I very much want it. I love his, Vanishing gave away a, I think they still are, you can watch the show. You can watch the Memdex show that he does, and it's absolutely brilliant. Pete and Ardy's Extractor. No, I haven't used it, but I love it. I think it's a great trick. This is from Azza Bridgewood. That extractor's a brilliant trick. I mean, you know, you cleanly put a card into the deck and take it out of your pocket. I think, and you close the deck, I think it's a brilliant, very falling, someone did it to me once before I knew about it, and I had literally no idea. It was brilliant. So, hopefully I've answered most of your questions. I'll just go back to the beginning. What's been your longest performance from Tom? Probably about this, probably. No. No, I used to, when I did, I haven't got a really long, when I did street shows, I sometimes would do like about 60 minutes, if it was hard to get an audience together, maybe 60 minutes an hour, to a show that should have been 20 minutes, really. Lots of rambling, that's where I learnt my rambling. I once saw a street show that was like 12 hours long, like a rumple. They used to, these hilarious shows used to go on and on and on, and just improvise, and you know, hilarious good, hilarious bad, but just utterly captivating. What's a B-level magician hourly rate of pay? Well, there's a saying that me and my friends used to, used to say when we turn up to a gig, that before we were sort of professionals, and we'd look around and go, this has got 50 quid written all over it. When it was a 50 quid written all over a gig, it's just like expensive and a bit extra. Nothing wrong with that at all if you just start now, as I was at the time. But then there's a crossover when you sort of turn up and go, I don't want to do this sort of thing anymore. So when talking about fees, I'm quite happy to talk about fees. A lot of people aren't. I always think starting out isn't, is starting out fees. You do it for nothing, do everything you can, just work, just perform, stage time, stage time. But when you get to a point where you should be charging, I always, I think sort of roughly 250 quid is kind of base rate from normal to decent, and then it goes up from there, maybe a bit less. Depends if you're doing it weekly. I see a residency for 100 quid because I used to get loads of work there. So yeah, very difficult question to answer, and it's different in different places as well. Who is my favourite comedian? Bill Hicks, Bill Hicks, Bill Hicks, without a shadow of a doubt. And I would say everything that I put into my magic comes from comedy. I don't actually watch that much comedy anymore, but the comedy I used to watch has influenced me a lot, probably even more than other magicians, really. So thank you very much. That was really, really nice to get your questions. Do you see yourself including this in your stage show or just exploring? Yeah, the news interview you saw the other day, if you saw the news interview with just me doing magic on the street, I used to do a street show with like an audience, a 45-minute street show in Covent Garden. That was my kind of, I did 10 years there. Would I do this, including this in my stage show or just exploring? I would, good question for a trick like this, actually. I would happily do it in a show, without a doubt. When I do my stage show locally, I have to come up with new material. I would do this without a shadow of a doubt, and I'm quite fussy about what I do. Will it end up staying there? I don't know. It depends on what the response is. I'd definitely put it into parlour as well. I think it's a lovely parlour trick. If I wasn't doing other kind of stuff, I think this is a really nice, like I say, beginning, middle, end. Whether I will or not is a different thing. Depends what's going on at the moment. Someone mentioned earlier what's my favourite trick of 2019. I think it's always gonna be a venom cube, if that was 2019, or level one. I think they were my two favourite from that year. So thank you very much. Just double check, nothing else. So what I'll, I was gonna do a little giveaway. Shall I do a little giveaway? All right, I'll do a give, I'll do, I'm gonna do a giveaway, all right? And, but don't, and you might not get it for a long time. The giveaway is, it's not what you're gonna see. I'll just, I'll do more giveaways. I don't do lots of giveaways. I've got two copies of Expert Card Technique that I've had for years. You can have one if you want. So that's my copy, that's the first one I bought years and years ago. I'm gonna send it to someone. And all you've gotta do, on the comments, not these comments, because once this goes up on YouTube, on the comments that are gonna be there forever, you are going to, and it will be open to everybody, people who watch it, will you sign it? Yes, I'll sign it. If you want me to, tell me, if you win it, tell me, ask me if you want me to ruin it by signing it and devalue it. This was $8.95 in the USA when I bought it. So, I didn't buy it in the USA, it just says how much it is there. It was only about six quid or something. So what you've gotta do is you've gotta give me ideas. You've gotta comment. These comments will be there forever, but you've gotta find them, I think. It's weird, I don't know how it works. What would you like to see added to this review show? So I added a thing this morning, which was a little roundup of other things, like mini reviews, which I think I'll start doing. But what would you like to see added to this? If it's nothing, you can say nothing, it's still a chance to win. And then I'll just put, there's a bit of software, basically, that randomizes it, so I won't have any idea of who's gonna win it. And if you're miles away, I'll still send it to you. It'll cost me money, probably, but I don't care. And you'll probably get it in about eight months. Look at how things are. But you can have that. So, Expert Car Technique, sign if you want it. If you win it, I'll draw it, I don't know, next week or something, maybe before, just before next week's show. I am a little bit overwhelmed sometimes at the moment, so I don't think I'm gonna be regularly doing live shows on Thursdays. I might sometimes, but I said I was gonna, and then all this happened, it's just become very, very difficult. If you've ever tried to learn a magic trick when you're trying to also homeschool your child, it's very difficult. I tried to learn all alone this morning, and I was doing it, and just going up. But I've got something very exciting that I might review on Thursday, if not Monday. Why is it exciting for me? It's probably not gonna be for you. So, remember it's, the question is, the comment is, on what would you like to see added to this review show? Or maybe taken away. So, thanks very much. Please check out cardmagiccourse.com. I didn't say at the beginning, we've got some new members, got some new stuff. We've got a seven o'clock going on tonight, which I'm gonna be teaching Chicago Opener by Al Leach's Hot Card Trick, which I'm very pleased to have got permission to teach. We're gonna do a workshop around that, so you can be all part of that. There are live sessions as well, which happen every week. So, and like, subscribe, share, and thank you so, so much for putting up with my ramblings. Be safe, your support is wonderful. The fact that you're there is wonderful, and you don't know what this does for me. It's sometimes a challenge at the moment, and it always puts a smile on my face. So, thanks very much. Have a great one. Thank you so much for your questions and comments, and I'll see if I can answer any, if there's any come in that I've missed. Take care, bye-bye. Bye-bye.