Back in the late 90s I was very fond of a song I heard on the radio called Nth Degree. I bought the single and after a while humming it wasn’t enough and I wanted to learn the lyrics. That’s when I realised what a bloody awful song it was and promptly never listened to it again.
The problem, you understand, is that the song was about the band, which sadly was named Morningwood.
This is the point when I tell you that this post has a Spotify playlist associated with it, so you can listen along. I will warn you though, some of the music is terrible.
Nth degree was not the first time I’d heard this curious lyrical quirk. That honour falls to the Vengaboys. What’s interesting about the Vengaboys is that they include the name of their band in a lot of their songs, usually by appending the Venga prefix to another word, and somehow I feel like maybe this is the key to their success. Not that the world is obsessed with finding out the next chapter in the Vengaverse, but simply because if you heard them on the radio it’s hard to not know who it is.
But it’s not just dropping the name of the band which makes Nth Degree an interesting song which is awkward to sing in public¹. The song is, at its core, about the band. They introduce themselves and everything, even explaining what I hope is a fictional sleeping arrangement. Honestly I’m not sure why I ever liked this song, I guess that catchy reverb guitar hook in the intro has a lot to answer for.
They’re far from the only band to do this kind of thing though. Synthpop superstars Freezepop has a song which introduces the individual members of the band and also tells you about the kind of sampling mixer they use, the Yamaha QY70.
Most recently I heard Tally Hall’s self referential song, introducing each band member not by name but by their gimmick². The song even goes on to outline their performing style and genre.
The context in which this all makes sense is that of a live performance, when before an audience the band wants to say “hello, this is us. We play music and wrote these songs for you to enjoy” but the audience wants to hear some music, so they kill two birds with one stone by opening their act with an intro song.
So what you’re now expecting is for me to go all Thought For The Day³ and say that we can apply this to magic by opening a show with a trick that somehow reinforces our identity as performers, and I guess you’re almost correct but also totally wrong. In a magical context we do this far too much.
Stripped of context a magic show is just one or more people doing things at look impossible or at the very least unusual. However given context a magic show can be about anything. Magic can tell a story, share a philosophy, affect people’s political persuasion, make people think deeply or dream wildly. A magical performance is capable of all these things, but most often it seems to be about 2 things:
- The perfomer
- Magic itself
This is quite a blanket statement so I’ll back it up by saying that item one includes introductions such as “when I was a child”, “on my travels through India”, “my grandfather once showed me”, and “I had a dream last night”, and item two includes statements of intent such as “I once saw a magician who”, “if I could do magic for real”, “magic is all about” and “what you’re about to see isn’t magic, it’s a display of my other talent”
Don’t get me wrong, I use some of these devices, it’s a good way of gaining an initial rapport with an audience and introducing yourself, but if you get halfway through your show and you’re still on, “my favourite memory” and “magic is a sense of wonder” people will start to switch off.
It’s important to note that Freezepop, Tally Hall and the Backstreet Boys only ever did one song each about themselves and are still going.
If you listen to the Vengaboys most popular songs however the top three all contain a phrase with a Venga prefix (Vengaboys, Vengabus, and Venga Airlines) and they are… Oh shit they’re still touring. Wow. Ibiza is a hell of a drug.
Anyway, my point is that people get tired of people singing about what it’s like to be in a band, no one wants to hear a stand-up comedian droning on about what it’s like to be a comedian⁴ and talking about magic is literally the least relatable thing you can do in a magic show.
Stay tuned for part 2 of this topic when we deconstruct the career of the electro- sensation Rednex.
¹ Honestly though the name of the band doesn’t help, Morningwood? Really? And with a woman on lead vocals…
² They dress identically on stage but wear different coloured ties to differentiate eachother, and refer to eachother as Yellow, Red, Green etc.
³ So statistically you probably don’t listen to the BBC Radio 2 breakfast show, so let me explain. Despite being a secular nation, every morning the nationally funded radio hosts a small segment from a religious authority, most often but not always a Christian preist, who will tell a small anecdote and relate it to their faith. In many ways it’s like this blog except that it’s cringingly terrible and often has a jarring gear change at the point when the story about some everyday nonsense suddenly shifts to being about Jesus.
⁴ I know Bill Bailey does a great bit about touring and Corby trouser presses in hotel rooms but that’s relatable to anyone who has been in a Travelodge. No, for the real miserable fucking life of a comedian you should look to Ricky Gervais’ latest Netflix special Humanity, in which he barks on humourlessly for an hour about arguing with people on Twitter who find his act offensive, interspersed with asides about how glad he is that he’s not poor anymore.