351: Wild, Wild Fielding West

Fielding West has been "wowing them" in Las Vegas for decades having worked and rubbed shoulders with some of those with glitz and glamor (like Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis among others) who made Sin City the entertainment mecca it has become today. Moreover, he was once roommates with another local magician, Lance Burton, and their friendship endures today. He and Johnny "The Great Tomsoni" Thompson continue to collaborate on the scripts for magicians performing on "the Strip" today as well as on television shows.

Winner of multiple awards from the magic community, Fielding West has been a guest on The Magic Word in the past but with all too brief of conversations as we caught each other in the hallways between magic convention activities. His conversations have spawned more comments and requests from listeners who would like to hear from from this icon of the Las Vegas magic community.

Today, Fielding focuses a lot of his time on coaching people to become better speakers and entertainers. He not only performs magic shows but also he is in demand as a keynote speaker these days.

Fielding West gives us a short tour of his magic memorabilia in his home.

Congratulations to Fielding West and to Luis Piedrahita who were the recipients of the "Performing Fellowship" presented at this year's Academy of Magical Arts awards show. Fielding talked about what a great honor this was and how he was excited for his buddy, Lance Burton, to be the one presenting it to him.

In addition to talking about his honor, Fielding tells some great stories about working in Las Vegas with some of the greats (both in and outside of magic), he gives some advice on performing. But most of all, this was just a fun chat with a good friend. Pour yourself a beverage of your choice and enjoy sitting in the corner and eavesdropping on our conversation. You'll love it!

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350: Hammer Time with Mike Hammer

For the past five years, Mike Hammer has been packing them in while headlining in his own theater in the Four Queens Casino and Hotel on Fremont Street, downtown Las Vegas. Mike has his own style, and it works for him. He is the "Don Rickles" of magic with a rather abrasive approach where he actually insults his audience...and they love him! The night I visited his show, the room was packed and afterwards I overheard some saying this was a repeat visit to enjoy his show. Two people had paid for return visits to watch his show over 30 times!

Some of you might remember seeing Mike on "Penn and Teller Fool Us" with his outrageously memorable performance using a blow up doll. If not, then you can view the video here on this blog.

In this podcast, we cover a lot of territory from how he developed his act, working in Las Vegas, routining, trick selection, getting out of bad situations when things go wrong, and keeping his performances fresh. This was a fun and funny podcast that includes a lot of sound advice with some great behind-the-scenes stories.

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334: A Magical Christmas Carol

Over the past year, I have attended a LOT of magic conventions. During those events, i have tried to update you with what was going on each day with daily updates from the organizers, talent, registrants, and dealers plus sometimes a little "color" background outside of the hotel.

But while I had some of my guests "cornered" for a few minutes, I asked them to do a reading of the classic story, "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. As many of you don't know, Dickens was a bit of a conjurer himself having performed during the summer of 1949 in a coastal resort off of the Isle of Wight purveying prestidigitation to those on holiday in the area. He was known as the “Rhia Rhama Rhoos - the Unparalleled Necromancer" and reportedly performed many unusual tricks including making playing cards magically burst into flames, transporting a woman’s watch from inside a wooden box and into the middle of a loaf of bread, and even cooking a steaming hot plum pudding in a gentleman’s top hat.

But prior to his venturing onto the stage to prestidigitate, he had already written many of his well-known novels including one published in 1843 which would become the iconic classic and perennial treatise on the holiday, "A Christmas Carol".

So here I present you this year's audio greeting card with great gratitude to all of my guests who participated in this project and also to all of you who regularly listen to The Magic Word Podcast. Happy Holidays!

As a little added treat for you this holiday season, here is a video I filmed and edited in 1985. Magician Scott Wells is visited by "three foreign" visitors who want to learn magic. In this video, Scott performs close-up, stand-up and stage magic for his guests. He also gives magic lessons to his guests; however, these instructions have been edited out of this public video.

Download this podcast in an MP3 file by Clicking Here and then right click to save the file. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed by Clicking Here. You can download or listen to the podcast through Stitcher by Clicking Here or through FeedPress by Clicking Here or through Tunein.com by Clicking Here. Remember, you can download it through the iTunes store, too. See the preview page by Clicking Here

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