Just as Lovering has incorporated a love for science into his act, Zabrecky too has created his own personal style. Standing before an audience in a stark black suit, with piercing eyes, he explores a particular genre called “Mentalism,” which involves audience interaction, storylines and mind reading. “Because there are not a lot of props, it tends to be more theatrical,” he explains. “It’s just numbers and words unless you present it well. I like storylines, the Hitchcock plot that leaves you a bit uneasy. I usually play John Cage music to throw people off and make them feel uncomfortable.”
Recently, the Magic Castle newsletter featured an article on Zabrecky, Lovering, and another magician, called Fitzgerald. In true DIY fashion, the three of them, joined occasionally by a friend called “Handsome Jack,” have taken to performing unofficial shows every Friday night in an unused basement theater of the Castle, believing that the only way to truly perfect their craft is to perform constantly. The night management at the Castle began referring to them as “The Unholy Three” for their offbeat and irreverent performing styles. “It really is a new-wave, alternative, avant-garde kind of magic,” Lovering says. “In my show I make references to weed and masturbation. And while they don’t exactly frown upon us at the Castle, it’s definitely different from the stuffier atmosphere you tend to see there.”
Earlier this year, Zabrecky was finally awarded a prestigious weeklong engagement at the Parlour of Prestidigitation, one of the Castle’s two ornate theaters. Besides performing at the Castle, Zabrecky also appears at local nightclubs, opening for bands, and at private parties. “I do a lot of parties for what I call punk rock yuppies,” he says, “kind of the smart, arty types who don’t mind throwing back a couple of cocktails and being entertained by a strange midnight magic show.”
Lovering has yet to play one of the Castle’s main theaters, but he continues his and Zabrecky’s Friday-night shows there and performs regularly at a North Hollywood art space called the California Institute of Abnormal Arts. He has also taken his magic act on the road, touring as the opening act for musicians Grant-Lee Phillips, Cracker, and former Pixie bandmates the Breeders and Frank Black.
“I think acts like his are a really good thing,” Black says, “because by the time you take the stage as the headliner, everyone still has fresh ears. Most of the time people are really into it; occasionally he gets heckled. But because he does a kind of dry comedy show, it doesn’t seem that out of place. There were, of course, some mishaps with his inventions. He once destroyed one of our vintage amplifiers with pickle juice.”
Like many touring acts, Lovering mans his own merchandise table after each performance. But instead of selling the standard T-shirts and CDs, he offers signed 8-by-10 photographs of himself, detailed plans to build something called a “Vortex Canon,” and authentic meteorite particles. “They’re from a meteorite that landed in Australia back in 1939,” Lovering explains. “I have them in little packages and sell them by the gram, like hash.”
While on tour with Frank Black and the Catholics, Lovering discovered that midway through each night’s performance, an intricate self-built machine called an “Electronic Flux Amplifier” would inevitably heat up and catch fire. As he waited for the device to cool off, he decided that he should host a short question-and-answer with the audience. “People would always ask me when the Pixies reunion would be,” he says, “and I would tell them that Frank, Kim and Joey, they’re always asking me about it, but that I’m really a scientific phenomenalist now.”
To be sure, there have always been alternative magicians out there. When asked who it is that inspires them, Zabrecky and Lovering both mention the same names: Ricky Jay, an intensely talented sleight-of-hand artist and actor; Max Maven, a mind reader and favorite of Orson Welles; and Eugene Burger, a mysterious bearded close-up master. The masses may flock to the saccharine big-budget productions of David Copperfield and Lance Burton, but perhaps like a corporate-rock scene of the mid-’70s, dominated by heartless exhibitions of virtuosity, the magic world is primed for an artistic punklike resurgence.
Zabrecky, Lovering and their cadre may not be technically flawless magicians — not yet anyway — but they all seem to demonstrate an almost defiant originality. And it might just be within an art form like magic, precisely because it has been so neglected, that we suddenly discover something fresh and new. As Zabrecky says, “When I started getting into magic, I quickly focused on the people I really liked. It was like listening to a bunch of records and deciding you like Black Flag over something more mainstream. It felt just like it did when I was discovering music at 13, and I still feel that way about it. It really feels like what I’m doing now is new and unexplored.”
