Thinking Allowed

Punk's Not Dead
by Jon Thompson

What does the 1970s UK punk movement have to do with producing material for magicians and mentalists today? In this piece, I hope to show that the answer is, in fact, quite a lot.

The first punk song I ever heard was “Anarchy in the UK” by the Sex Pistols. It was a pop song that actually dared to spit difficult questions at society. Why are things this bad? Who made them like this? What do we really want? How do we get it? For me, it changed everything.

But the Pistols were lucky. They were in the right place at the right time. How could other bands get a break in an industry that didn’t like the new sound? The solution was, to my mind, the real essence of UK punk.

Faced with rejection, punk bands and their managers simply bypassed the music industry altogether by setting up their own record labels and signing themselves! One notable label was London’s Stiff Records, which signed The Damned, Elvis Costello and even Motorhead amongst a long list of others.

By begging, borrowing, and in some cases stealing, labels (sometimes nothing more than a quick thinker with access to a payphone) bought studio time and had the results pressed into records. This was no small feat, given the lack of experience, credibility and the overwhelming amount of amphetamine available at the time, but happen it did.

The next step was to get the records into the shops. Without a distribution deal to help them, however, sometimes those same quick thinkers would even visit record shops up and down the country themselves in the hope of a sale-or-return deal. If they pushed hard enough with good enough products, they too found they were in the right place at the right time, just like the Pistols had been. This ability to engineer the right circumstances illustrates an important point, however.

The common factor is good ideas. The whole ethos seems to have worked through the application of a string of good ideas. It was a good idea to kick against a stagnant, selfish musical landscape. It was a good idea to start your own record label. It was a good idea to push hard to get the music into the shops and onto the radio because that’s how it sells.

But above all, it was a good idea to write songs worth pushing in the first place, songs that filled a niche - and not only songs.

By adopting the punk work ethic (now there’s a phrase!), other forms of expression quickly opened up. Poetry, dance and design all flourished at a grassroots level, for instance. If your favourite band wasn’t being covered in the music press, you could simply start a fanzine. You needed exactly three things: a pen, some paper, and time on a photocopier.

I’m not saying that everything about punk was great. There were some terrible acts who genuinely only knew three chords. Some cynically attempted to make money by hanging onto the coattails of others and doing it by numbers. But, provided you had something worth saying, the central premise of making things happen yourself was, and I believe still is, absolutely sound.

So, again, what does this have to do with magic or mentalism?

I think those who set out to develop material for the magic and mentalism markets can learn a huge free lesson from the punk way of getting things done, especially about the advantages of retaining control. The reason is based on what I’ve learned about magic and mentalism publishing over thee past year or so.

To me, it was obvious that you adopt the punk work ethic and do it myself. But rather than go down the self-publishing route, I’ve discovered that some noted and well-respected producers of material have accepted deals with magic publishers that would impress the most Scrooge-like music business executive. In the majority of cases, these are deals pay a small flat fee, with no share of any subsequent sales!
It shocked and frankly outraged me to hear how little some creators received for ideas that should be supplying them with a small but steady income for years to come. It needn’t be this way.

For instance, the means of producing high-quality publications are readily available, just as studio and pressing plant facilities were available in the 1970s to the punks. Everything you need is free to you at the point of creation. It’s all out there on the web, as is the market for your material. So, if the deal you’re being offered is
paltry, walk away. Set up what is tantamount to your own publishing house and sign yourself!

Nothing sells without credibility, however. You need reviews, so give away copies (yes that’s right – for free!) to everyone you think will be interested. Push. Push hard. Bang on doors. Make it happen. If needs be, order copies of your work yourself at cost, and take them into the nearest magic shop, looking for a sale-or-return deal. If you get some sales by your own efforts, then if you decide to approach a publisher,
you can use those sales to get a better, fairer deal.

Underpinning all this effort has to be an idea strong enough to warrant your efforts, and that’s the difficult part; the part where most will inevitably fall by the wayside. The idea you have has to be of the strongest possible kind. It also has to be as unique as it is beguiling to performers and spectators alike. As soon as you think you have an effect or an approach to your art that will change the world, that’s the time to start really sinking effort into developing it into something that will blow the world clean away.

Nothing less will do. There’s no shortcut. You have to put the hours into honing, and if necessary radically redesigning, your idea. Be ruthless, realistic and unsentimental. Be prepared to kill it and take parts from the corpse for something else if needs be. Don’t be the second anything. The world has enough coins rattling about in bottles,
just as it has enough levitations, cards through windows and book tests.

This is how punk relates to producing magic and mentalism material today. If you genuinely believe you have something powerful and unique to share with the world, don’t sell it cheaply and watch others exploit what should be your reward.

I remember Sex Pistols lead singer John Lydon screaming some very good advice during a live TV performance: “Get off your arse!” 200 years earlier, Dr Johnson expressed the same sentiment slightly more eloquently: “A man of genius,” he noted, “is ruined by nothing but himself”. Perhaps what I’m trying to summarise is best summed up by Stiff Records. Ever the masters of slogan, they once sent out a
promotional clock, upon whose face was written: "When you kill time you murder success".

Push. Push harder. Bang on doors. Make it happen. Retain control. But start today.

Jon Thompson