It's my opinion that you can never master a trick or routine. You will find new things in a routine after you have performed it 1000's of times. It can still improve. When you have done it 10,000 times in performance, then you might start getting close.

koz

Awesome! Only 7 more times and I'll be close to mastering Gazzo's routine.

Kidding. No lynching please!

I'll agree with Kozmo...with clarification...
When I say 'master a routine', of course there is always room for improvements & changes, but master a routine so that you can always perform it. It may not be the 'improved' version, but that will come in time.

More importantly, I think the sign of a great performer is the ability to look hard a routine and ask, "how can I improve it?"

Complacency will eventually be the death of an act.

Robert Bloor

I meant this as well, By mastered I meant that I could do the tricks with proficiency, and with a patter that the spectators enjoy.

Is this a stage routine? I thought that the tricks did not seem to tie together very well; they are all fun tricks on their own, but they don't seem to flow. But then again, I don't know what your patter is like. Good luck.

Y'know, this takes me back to when Dai Vernon published HIS cups & balls routine.

Within months, EVERYBODY was doing it, complete with his lines and everything.

Now, the Ultimate is, deservedly, Gazzo.

And in ten years - or three - or next month, someone else will come along and EVERYBODY will be doing THAT routine.

Look at the Stevens' video on the cups. The only routine on there that isn't a variation of Vernon's is Johnny Paul's (and some moves from a foreign fellow whose name escapes me at the moment - my apologies).

And anyone who has seen Johnny Paul's routine has been uniformly blown out of their socks by it.

So, guys, look to somewhere other than the "newest, latest, greatest and the best" of the moment.

Seeing seventeen slight variations of ONE C&B routine at every magic convention was one of the reasons I stopped going TO magic conventions!

Step away from the fad, with your hands in the air, people!

With all due respect to both Gazzo (one of the GREAT routines, I freely admit) and the Professor, of course!

Lee Darrow, C.Ht.
http://www.leedarrow.com

Good idea.
What about the rest of us who have no desire to go to magic conventions and make our livings performing for normal people who aren't magicians?

Robert Bloor

Robert - You've hit the nail on the head... or at least one of them. Performing for real people all the time is a different pair of socks. A performer needs to make the effect his/her own. If ,say, Kozmo does Gazzo's Cups & Balls verbatim it will be different, it will be Koz's. Or if he does Vernon's or Cellini's or whatever. But those performers who don't figure out how to take that as a template and make it their own won't last very long.
If every performer took the time to invent, write, rehearse and develope his/her own original C & B then... well, finish it yourself. Besides, the above mentioned masters know a lot more about it than me. As Frank Zappa said many times: "Steal from the Best." And I think he stole that line from Stravinsky.

- Bill

When I saw your list I never even thought of street magic!

When my broken arm heals I will do the Vernon Cups and Balls routine. Gazzo really got P*SS*D when I was doing his routine....

If that wansn't bad enough, Whit broke my front teeth when he saw me trying to Pop my Mongolian Knots.

Right lets put this baby to rest. As most people mentioned at the beggining of the post to much stuff dude. Don't forget, in order to make a decent hat your going to have to draw a crowd and if your planning on doing those particular tricks, in that order without doing some crowd building beforehand, you won't draw a decent crowd. But you don't have to listen to me, I say the best way to learn is to try things, so just give it a go.

Secondly, if you can do Gazzo's C&B's then do them. He published them, he put them on video, create your own patter, but if you can do the routine then do it.

Any way, good luck dude.
TMM

I stood Svengali stall for 4 Years, (gee, I just shocked myself "four years.") When it was quiet I would practice Cups and Balls made my own leather pouch and came up with loads of diffrent loads, you know lemons, tennis balls base balls. I have had small foot balls and rugby balls I even had a wamble under the hat. A Mellon came about natually I have never seen Gazzo tapes nor have I seen him perform. Even though I bought a set of Gary's cups. I feel that my routine is original even though I use six small oranges and melons, there is a Question in there if you read between the lines.
Mario (Excuse the spelling)

What is a wamble?

I may have spelled it wrong; a wamble is a character from a British childrens program - A lot like a teddy bear with a long pointy face.

In my routine I used to say "Do you know why I call this ball one-ball? Because I got a wamble under my hat. As I lifted it?

Twisted_Reality Your routine sounds really nice but it's not really street Magic.

I learned Dai Vernon's routine and a couple of others move for move a long time ago. I did this knowing that someday, after hundreds or thousands of sessions with the cups, my own routine would evolve. It did and I'm happy with it.

Could I have put off learning the cups and balls until I developed my own routine instead of imitating the masters? Probably. But I reckon that I would have lost quite a bit of time doing so.

I never would have dreamed of ripping off an unpublished routine; I figured that Vernon and the others published their routines so that the next generation would have something to learn from.

Personally, I wouldn't feel good about spending my ENTIRE life performing someone else's routine word for word, move for move. However, there's a lot to be said for using published routines as a starting point. We're fortunate that experts, such as Gazzo and Vernon, have shared what a professional routine looks like.

Right just to help out if I can I have these things to say: -


1- I agree toooooo muuuuuccccchhhhh sstttuuuffffffff

2- pick 3-6 and master them in a single order starting small and building to a climax.

3- AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION MAKES THE HAT

4- here is my routine
1)Vanishing ciggarette(lit ciggie pull)then removing the still lit ciggerette from a speks handbag or back pack.
2)twetieth century silks in the hands of a spek.
3)C&B routine
4)Big Fire finish with one of three fire tricks I use.which three ill never tell my secret unless you see me in australia in melbourne on southbank.

and 5 make sure you know your stuff forwards backwards upside down and inside out and that you can deal with anything a spek does from grabbing a cup or tipping a dovepan to taking equipment and yelling out the secret if they know it iv had it all happen to me and trust me covering up the stupidity of speks is a leeson worth learning to be able to hide a mistake caused by a spek and make it look like it was all part of the act is a skill well worth mastering well that's my well 2 cents or perhaps 5 dollars worth

Paul TRIPLE "F" Fletcher
:bluebikes: