Ben
Gazzo is one of the most well known and mimicked street performer to date. His use of the Cups and Balls routine has made is an outstanding piece of magic that many (not all) street performers will use to in their own street show. Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller even said that his performance was done perfectly when he appeared on Penn and Tellers Fool Us.
The lecture is fairly short compared to a lot of other lectures, running at an hour and 54 minutes. Roughly half an hour of the download is a video of Gazzo performing live at the magic castle, where you see him really work his crowd and gives and amazing display of comedy mixed (the gags shown and taught are definitely worth a look at) with simple magic. A lot of people look to these lectures for new tricks and moves to practice and perform, if that's the case then this may not be the lecture for you. A large portion of this is Gazzo giving advice to street performing: where to set up, how to start the performance, crowd building, the pitch, and pocket management.
When it comes to the actual material Gazzo taught, he starts off by teaching how to perform a top change using good misdirection. I'm quite likely to be trying out this way of the top change, a lot of Magicians struggle with this move and feels it needs to be Invisible, but much like the classic pass, you need to have some form of misdirection to go with it, so I do recommend this teaching of the top change, while its simple and short, it will improve how you improve a top change.
In the video of his performance at the magic castle, Gazzo only performs two effects, an Ambitious Card Routine and his version of the Egg Bag (The Black bag). The ACR he performs uses more forces then double lifts (although he does have a very good double lift that he doesn't teach). There's some work on the classic force which I found quite interesting and some people would definitely benefit from checking out. The other two forces I'm a big fan of, one is a gag where you fan out the cards, I, personally going to be using this, and a more psychological force which, again, I will be trying out. The Black Bag routine isn't taught in the lecture as Gazzo plans to release it in a future project where he's able to go through the small details a lot better.
Lastly there are some card peeks which I love. Two are taught, one in the action of fanning the cards, and the other by simply handing the deck to the spectator. These are both going into my repertoire and I do recommend them.
Overall, what I'll be taking from this lecture is a few utility moves that I believe are practical and effective, as well as jotting down a couple lines and gags. I felt like this lecture was quite short, especially since half of the lecture was a performance from the magic castle, Gazzo could have taught some effects that he has used in the past in his performances (Although he did state that the tricks choose the performer, not the other way round), even a showing of his cups and balls routine I felt would have been very much appreciated.
If you're looking to get started in street performing and earning money from it, check out this lecture, the advice will be some good starting points, the gags will help you to get started with your own comedy and possibly inspire you to make more jokes yourself and develop a natural instinct when it comes to comedy, the utilities will help will basic performances which you can build shows around.
