741: Steve Aldrich - A Long Strange Trip

This episode is dedicated to those who remember the past and for those who want to learn more about our rich history. This week we travel back in time in our Grateful Dead VW bus and visit with magician and co-founder of the Foan Family Circus, Steve Aldrich. It was a simpler time when magicians were experimenting with new presentations and popular music of the time. It was at the height of Doug Henning’s popularity who was considered by some as a “Hippie Magician”.

Steve Aldrich also performed magic at the famed Tower Bar in Snowmass at a time when Doc Eason was still a waiter Steve and his band of merry men (and a woman) surprised and entertained magicians with their “tongue in cheek” original presentations of their “Foan Family Circus” at many magic conventions during the late 1970’s to early 1980’s. So what happened to the group? That and more will be the topic of discussion in this week’s episode.

If you are more of a visual person, then you will enjoy this video of our conversation recorded via Zoom.

Steve talks this week about the formation of the Foan Family Circus, their original presentations and music, their performances at magic conventions (one of which won them the Senator Crandall Comedy Award at Abbott’s Get Together), plus the origins of magic at the Tower Bar starting with Bob Sheets then passed down to Steve Aldrich and Steve Spill.

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544: Gaetan Bloom - Crazy Creative

Gaetan Bloom is recognized as not only one of the most inventive and creative magic thinkers in our world of magic, but also he is one of the really nice guys in magic. We sat down with Gaetan during a recent magic convention and spent some quality time talking about his work in France, his performances at the Crazy Horse cabaret in Paris, his first meeting with another creative thinker, Kevin James, plus his thoughts and philosophies on magic and working with invisible thread and much more.

Gaetan Bloom talks about his road to work at the Crazy Horse in Paris, his thoughts on creativity using thread, his friendship with another magic creator, Kevin James, and many more topics.

335: Howard Hamburg - Voices from the Past

Howard Hamburg has been around a long time...a very long time. And he has conferred with and confided in the some of the legends of our magical art. You name them, and Howard has a true, first hand story about them. Howard brings history alive with his marvelous stories of personal relationships with legendary magicians. There are some great stories in here and some performance tips along the way, too. At the beginning of this podcast, Howard talks about his attendance at "Escorial" in El Escorial, Spain which is an invitation-only card magic convention hosted by Juan Tamariz.

A spectator places ANY 2 face-up spot cards on the table the magician removes a joker from his deck and places it face up onto the table as well. The performer mentions that the number 7 is considered a lucky number among Americans, the number 8 is considered a lucky number by the Chinese, but 13 is the performer's lucky number for certain cards in the deck.