ECCENTRICKS - CHARLIE FRYE

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ECCENTRICKS - CHARLIE FRYE

Postby pcwells » Dec 7th, '09, 19:10



The Effect:
A collection of over 70 tricks, gags, and stunts from the late 1900s to the early 21st Century.

Cost:
My copy cost £19.99 from MagicBox

Difficulty
(1=easy to do, 2=No sleights, but not so easy, 3=Some sleights used,
4=Advanced sleights used, 5=Suitable for experienced magicians only)
Varies. Usually 1 for the gags, 5 for the stunts, and the tricks being somewhere in between.

Review
It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Chrlie Frye. I was fortunate enough to catch him performing, lecturing, and generally hanging out at the South Tyneside Magic Festival a couple of years ago, and his material was all solid gold.

For those that don't know, Charlie is a juggler, a magician, manipulator and lunatic. He wears his influences on his sleeve - with many harking back to silent screen legends such as Buster Keaton. And his three Eccentricks DVDs are a humbling reminder that those silent slapstick blokes were doing their stuff for real - there were no fancy CGI wizards to make them look good.

I discovered the existance of the Eccentricks book while browsing the MagicBox for something £2.50 or more to up the value of an order and win me free postage. Okay, the book set me back £20, but there's logic in there someplace.

First the disappointment:

The book is quite lightweight - being only 57 A4 pages.

It's also spiralbound rather than perfect bound, so it doesn't add any aethetic benefit to your bookshelf.

But those annoyances diminish the moment you start reading...

The book is a mishmash of magic tricks, jugglers' stunts and general gags. Most of them were originally published in Charlie's columns in Juggler and Magic magazines, and were also included on his Eccentricks DVDs. There is new material here too, however. And the book also makes a good supplement to the DVDs - not just because it's easier to browse in bed, but because each of the gems Charlie offers up are presented here in isolation, rather than as part of crazed quickfire routines that can leave your head spinning.

Things do have a genral roundabout sense of order, with the contents divided up into three sections - balancing feats, magic, and stunts. But beyond that, it's all a big bubbling pot of everything. The magic collection, for example, features a ball vase routine, some wonderful mentalism tips, and things to do with a pot of creamer.

The effects are quickly and neatly explained (unlike, for example, Paul Harris's Art of Astonishment books, which are so pretentious and clever-clever in their wording that I tend to lose interest in his tricks before I even find out what they are).

Explanations are equally as succinct - explaining how around 70 bits of business can be presented in just under 60 pages.

Despite their brevity - or possibly because of it - the material is wonderfully clear. It's all helped, of course, by the fact that Mr Frye is also an excellent illustrator (I'm really beginning to hate him now).

The gags are daft bits of business that can be added to a performance, or just thrown into impromptu situations to make you look weird. There are gags and betchas in there that require no great skill (aside from having the guile to do them).

Magicwise, there's sleight-of-hand based close-up magic that will really test your digital dexterity. Charlie offers an ingenious take on swami work, and a neat little touch that fixes much of the illogic surrounding the centre tear.

As Charlie is a juggler, you'll also find lots of stuff to do with balancing, throwing and catching.

OVERALL:
OR: What I love most about this:


The content is serious stuff, often written with experienced performers in mind. However, it looks just like the introductory magic books I had as a kid. Just glancing through the pages fills me with the excitement and enthusiasm I had way back then - something that I rarely get to experience these days.

Much of the stuff here is classic and well-known, but Charlie Frye seems to add an exciting twist to everything, which suddenly makes it seem fresh again. Ideas that you knew as a kid, and have since dismissed will come back to bite you and have you giggling like a kid again.

Some people will be put off by the extreme range of material on offer here, working on the belief that jugglers shouldn't do magic, magicians shouldn't do mentalism, and nobody should stick the head of a prawn on their finger. To them, I say "poo, poo and more poo!". It took me a long time to realise that what I wanted more than anything was to squeeze as much fun as possible out of my performances - regardless of whether I'm doing a kids' show or a mindreading demonstration. As such, absurdity and daftness are worth much more to me than any cool new trick...

Great purchase.

SCORE: 9/10. Charlie loses a point for being a smarty-pants.

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pcwells
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