Gambit Magazine

The second issue of Benjamin Earl’s magazine Gambit is now available. The magazine has changed slightly from the first issue. I still have some reservations about the use of space in such a slim magazine and feel more could be put into it. To be fair to Earl, the magazine is still a work in progress and Earl is obviously working towards improving it with each issue (and succeeding). I think the premise of the magazine, which is to concentrate on card magic, is an excellent one and I hope it flourishes (no pun intended regards card handling) and I am definitely going to keep it on my reading list. The original Gambit website has closed down and now the magazine is available through Earl’s website.

http://www.benjaminearl.com/gambit-magazine/

This is an opportunity to remind you of other magic magazines available in the UK.

Mystery Magazine edited by Walt Lees and published by Paul Cook’s Magic Books By Post.

http://www.themysterymagazine.com/

Magicseen published by Mark Leveridge.

http://www.magicseen.co.uk/

The LaBaL published by Al Smith. Al doesn’t have a website for The LaBaL. To inquire about subscriptions please email Al on albertesmith@myway.com

Finally, there is The Crimp by Jerry Sadowitz. For details on that, please go to the Magicians Only section on his website.

http://www.jerrysadowitz.com/

Cards On The Table by Jerry Sadowitz

Just a brief note on the excellent book Cards On The Table by Jerry Sadowitz. I’ve noticed copies of this book on sale on sites such as Ebay; the price tends to be £25 to £60. There is no need to pay such a high price. The book is still in print and available from the publisher Martin Breese at £15.

This is not a book for amateurs but the effort put into learning the tricks is well worth it; for example, Name a Card Triumph and Ambitious Spots are both rewarding tricks to learn that never fail to amaze spectators.

The LaBaL Competition

In the July issue of the The LaBaL I am sponsoring a competition where one of the readers can win a paperback copy of A Briefe and Pleasaunt Treatise Entituled Naturall and Artificiall Conclusions by Thomas Hill, the text of 1581. For those who do not know, The LaBaL is one of a handful of British magic magazines which are independent of any magic club. With the demise of Abra in March of this year and The Magician Magazine last year, we are left with only four such magazines in the UK (I would be glad to hear from anyone that can name more British based magic magazines which are independent of any magic club). They are Jerry Sadowitz’s The Crimp, Mark Leveridge’s Magicseen, Benjamin Earl’s Gambit Magazine and Al Smith’s The LaBaL.

Each magazine is very different. Magicseen deals with the subject of magic in a general way touching on all or any news items, interviews, reviews, etc. Gambit’s sole concern is card magic. Both Magicseen and Gambit have their own websites where copies can be bought. The Crimp is filled with Sadowitz’s caustic humour. It is only for sale to people whom Sadowitz considers to be trusted magicians. The LaBaL is the creation of magician Al Smith.

Al Smith was the editor and publisher of Abacus, a magic magazine that went out monthly for ten years. After finishing his time with Abacus he wanted to edit a less demanding periodical and so he created what he calls a “now and then quarterly”, The LaBaL, which is now in its sixth year. He calls The LaBaL a ‘Magzine’; note that it is not a magazine with an ‘a’ but a ‘Magzine’ with the letter ‘a’ missing. Al Smith has taken the words magazine and fanzine and crushed them into one word: Magzine. It is a good description for The LaBaL. It has some of the qualities of a fanzine, a no frills spiral bound A4 periodical published for and contributed to by those who share a love of a particular interest; at the same time it has the editorial standards and number of pages of a magazine, along with the fact that some of the contributors are professional practitioners of that shared interest. Each issue contains news, reviews, tricks, etc.

If you are a subscriber to The LaBal then be sure to look for the competition in the July issue. If you are not a subscriber but are interested in The LaBaL, then you can buy a single issue or take out a subscription directly from Al Smith. He can be contacted by writing to A. Smith, 17 Osbert Road, Rotherham, South Yorkshire, S60 3LD, UK.

Stewart Lee and Jerry Sadowitz

The series Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, BB2 on Mondays, came to an end this week. I have enjoyed the series and hope that there will be another in the future. Lee’s style is one which deserves admiration. He discusses a subject in a nonchalant way, seemingly following a ‘stream of consciousness’ process and yet making use of well thought out repetitions of phrases and concepts. He comments on the absurdities of life and occasionally also on the situation of being a stand up comedian performing to a live audience. The latter goes so far as to him admitting that a particular tale he is telling, of something that happened to him the week before, is a fiction; even so, he keeps telling the tale whilst explaining which parts are not true and the fictional characters in the tale begin to ask him what does he think he is he doing. It is comedy which could be theatre of the absurd at its most accessible. After watching this series, I regard Stewart Lee as being the Samuel Beckett of stand up comedy.

An extra treat in the last episode was Jerry Sadowitz imitating Jimmy Savile in a sketch. A unique comedian, and a unique magician, Sadowitz has been missing from our television screens for far too long and I hope that he will appear on television more in the near future. A misunderstood performer, sometimes deliberately misunderstood by some, it may be the case that television producers cannot see beyond Sadowitz’s stage persona to the experienced professional behind it, cannot tell fact from fiction in the fuss about the image that accompanies his comedy persona. During his live shows he presents the audience with a persona of an aggressive, loud, opinionated, foul mouthed Glaswegian who airs shocking points of view that can invoke an occasional negative response from a few audience members; Sadowitz then gets called racist, sexist, etc., despite the fact that those people bought a ticket to the show in order to laugh at a racial stereotype: an aggressive, loud, opinionated, foul mouthed Glaswegian who airs shocking points of view.

An audience watching comedian Omid Djalili (whose brilliant new series began this week on BBC1) when he imitates a Middle Eastern accent and declares “and that is why the West must be destroyed” tend to laugh because they are laughing at a racial stereotype. They do not believe that Djalili is a Middle Eastern terrorist or that he means what he is saying; they know it is only a comedy act. It is different with Sadowitz, an audience seems to believe that the comedy character they are being presented with is genuinely who Sadowitz is as a person and that the things said really are his own sincerely held views. It is a bit like believing that Omid Djalili really is a Middle Eastern terrorist or believing that Warren Mitchell really is Alf Garnet. At one of Sadowitz’s shows which I watched, at least three times during the show he had to point out to a small number of audience members that it was a comedy act and that he did not really mean what he was saying, that he is a comedian and it is just an act. The crux of the matter can be highlighted by a further comparison with Djalili. When Djalili has finished using his Middle Eastern persona he can revert back to using his own voice, which has an English accent. When Sadowitz has finished using his ‘extreme’ Glaswegian persona, he still has a Glaswegian accent. It is much easier for people to differentiate between Djalili and his Middle Eastern persona than it is for them to do the same with the real Glaswegian Jerry Sadowitz and his fictional foul mouthed Glaswegian used as a comedy persona. (Before anyone points it out, yes, I know that Sadowitz was born in America but he was raised in Glasgow and has a Glasgow accent.)

I sometimes wonder if there is a touch of racism against the Scottish and Glaswegians in the people who refuse to accept that Sadowitz is not the obviously exaggerated Glaswegian stereotype he uses as a stage persona. From the descriptions given by people who know Sadowitz personally and even from some journalists who have bothered to take the time to look behind the stage persona instead of exploiting it, it is to be found that Sadowitz is a quiet person who is teetotal and shares little in common with the character he presents on stage.

A tiny, tiny glimpse of the real Jerry Sadowitz is given in the book This Virtual Life: Escapism and Simulation in Our Media World by Andrew Evans and it is given by Sadowitz himself. Not only did he contribute to a modest part of Evans’ research for the section of the book which deals with the media, trickery, magic and audience reactions thereon, Sadowitz also wrote the foreword to the book. Not even the slightest hint of his stage persona is to be found in there and we meet someone else entirely.

The real Jerry Sadowitz is, perhaps, none of our business. He is entitled to his privacy and as a performer, the product 'Jerry Sadowitz, Comedian and Magician' is probably all we will be allowed to know. However, I sometimes wonder if Sadowitz wishes that people, including television producers, would realise and remember that there is a real Jerry Sadowitz that is different from the comedy persona. Something that Spike Milligan once said in a television interview, for me, highlights why people are so ready and willing to believe the outrageous about Sadowitz (or others) without looking deeper. Milligan was telling a hilariously ludicrous story that was supposed to be a true event and another guest on the show recognised the story; he stated he knew the people involved and it did not happen the way Milligan was telling it. Milligan gestured towards the audience and asked "What do you think these people want to hear? A boring truth or an interesting lie?"

Abracadabra Magazine, the last incantation.

Davenports, the owners of Abracadabra magazine.

Abracadabra, 2nd February 1946 to 28th March 2009.

This week sees the publication of the last ever issue of the longest running British national magic magazine, independent of any magic club or magic society, Abracadabra; it was hailed as the only magical weekly in the world, its contributors were diverse in character ranging from Ali Bongo to Jerry Sadowitz, and its readers fondly nicknamed it Abra. After 63 years and 3,296 issues the weekly magazine came to an abrupt end with little warning to its loyal readers. In the previous week’s issue it was announced that the magazine was being bought by entrepreneur Stephen Martin. Then there was gossip on internet discussion boards that the business deal collapsed on the evening of Sunday 22nd March, one day after the announcement of a buy-out. They were all asking would Abra cease publication and in a last minute change to the magazine’s editorial, this week’s issue contained the sad announcement that it would indeed be the last one. Word quickly spread on discussion boards on the internet; the reaction is one of disappointment and has been described by one magician as “a tragic loss to the magical community.”

The magazine was the creation of Charles Goodliffe Neale and the first issue went on sale on February 2nd, 1946. He successfully maintained the weekly magazine until his death in 1980, after which the famous magic dealers of London, Davenports, bought the business from the Goodliffe family. Established in 1898, Davenports is a family business that has had four generations of magicians and dealers of magic apparatus and books. Their shop once had a prestigious location opposite the British Museum. It is now located in the Charing Cross Underground Arcade.

Magic is about secrets and it is unfortunate that one secret that Daveneports kept in the past number of years was that Abra was in trouble. When magician and Magic Circle member Walt Lees was made editor, he was given a year and then a second year to change the fortunes of the magazine. In this week’s final issue Walt wrote in his editorial that the publishers had “placed their trust in me and I did my best. Sadly my best wasn’t good enough.” Noble as it is for Walt Lees to take some responsibility for the magazine’s demise, the truth is that no blame should be put his way. An editor of magic magazines with nearly thirty years experience, he ensured that Abra maintained a high standard of style and content whilst meeting the needs of the readers, who often let him know what that was and being a good editor he listened.

Richard Kaufman, magician and publisher of the American magic magazine The Genii, has expressed the opinion that the internet contributed to Abra’s reduction in sales, citing Duncan Trillo’s website MagicWeek as a competitor for weekly news of magic in Britain. Others have expressed the opinion that Abra is another periodical which has become victim to the recession.

So what happened? Was it the recession? Was it the internet? Well, personally, I think not; for once, it was not entirely those bugbears. The Goodliffe website, property of Davenports, consisted of three pages, none of which was particularly informative about Abra. It was also very out of date; it still named Donald Bevan as editor, even though he had handed over the reins of Abra to Walt Lees some time before. The only weblink on the site for inquiries about Abra was to the Davenports website. If that link was followed it led to Davenports main page, where a less than noticeable link (now removed) could be found regarding subscriptions to Abra.

Neither website followed the standard advertising and sales methods used by other publishers of magic magazines such as The Genii, Magic Magazine or Magicseen. There was no description of the magazine, no details of the latest issue and its contents, no sample articles or photos, nothing that would entice new readers to subscribe. A free copy of Abra could be sent on request for perusal but such a sales technique is never cost effective and very behind the times in comparison with the online methods used by the above named rivals of Abra. Could it be that Davenports were relying on Abra’s reputation to bring sales? If so, it is a sales approach that has brought many a good product to an end. Every week brings a new generation of readers for periodicals and they tend to make their choices of what to buy based on what is advertised and advertised well.

Last year I met mentalist Chris Cox at one of his shows and said I was submitting a review to Abra, which was later published; subsequently, in an exchange of emails with me, he asked how to get a copy. It speaks volumes in regard to Davenports' advertising of Abra that a successful performer from a new generation of magicians, who has won awards, performed on radio and television, who has undoubtedly researched magic in building an act, has heard of the name but does not know the details of a magic magazine in its sixty second year of publication or where to buy a copy.

And the true shame of it all is that Abra was probably the best magic magazine in existence. It contained a minimum of advertising and a maximum of news. On news subjects that internet sites would only give a paragraph, Abra gave pages, sometimes a whole issue. While magic societies have occasional newsletters available only to its members, Abra connected all the magic societies in regards to weekly news and events. There was also up to date, sound advice from experienced performers on the small but nevertheless very relevant topics overlooked by other magazines. If one thing has to be chosen as iconic of Abra it was the debates that were thrashed out in articles and letters that appeared in its pages. Strong opinions, controversy and arguments on all aspects of magic had always been an ingredient of Abra.

Now it is all gone. The secrecy surrounding Abra’s financial health stole any opportunity from its readers of finding a way to save it. I am sure that if a small number of like-minded subscribers banded together and pooled their resources early enough, Abracadabra could have been saved. It was the one time in the history of magic that keeping secrets was a bad idea.