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Wizard Rock Has Fans in Hogwarts Heaven
(By John Locher -- Las Vegas Review-journal Via Associated Press)
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"Who here feels like a muggle?" Paul DeGeorge wants to know.
He's onstage in front of an outdoor crowd in downtown Los Angeles. DeGeorge and his brother Joe are dressed in matching Potter regalia: white shirts under gray crew-neck sweaters, red-and-yellow striped ties, wire-rim glasses. It's hard to tell them apart, except Paul sports the studded leather belt.
No one, apparently, feels like a muggle. About 200 people sit on the grass. It's the middle of the afternoon rush hour; office drones and traffic stream past.
"Who here feels like a wizard?" Paul asks.
"Whoooooo!! Yeah!" Everyone feels like a wizard. Hands fly into the air, the crowd jumps to its feet. The brothers and their drummer, Andrew MacLeay, launch into the first song, "Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock." Everyone sings along, which is easy, since the title is pretty much the only line.
The venue? It's not the House of Blues, or even hipster hangout Spaceland. This is a corner of the lawn at the central branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. "Let's tear it up with our magical dance moves!" Paul says, and the crowd obliges.
The sound is simple, catchy rock-- think the White Stripes crossed with Raffi. Joe plunges into the audience with his mic; happy teenagers high-five him. Everyone jumps up and down, yelling along.
The sound quality is lame, the music is sloppy, but Harry and the Potters are not about fancy guitar work. And this is not a crowd of rock critics or posers. Median age: 18, though some gray-hairs hang in the back, singing along, and a few little kids run in circles, knocking into each other like puppies.
Some are garbed for the Harry Potter theme: here, a wizard cloak, over there, school uniforms. Harry and the Potters T-shirts with owls or lightning strikes or the words "Save Ginny!" are flying off the merch tables at the back.
"We're just really into the books," Clare Kelley, 18, says as she hangs out with a few friends before the show. "It's great how they promote the books and get kids to read."
Her friend Julia Wagner, 17, whose red T-shirt says "Reading Is Radical," saw Harry and the Potters the past two summers at the library.
So she must really like the music?
