For Harry Potter fans about to rock, we salute you

A global network of Potter-influenced bands inspired kids like 8-year-old Darius to make their own wizard rock. Will fans keep the music alive?

By Elisabeth Donnelly

Read more: Arts & Entertainment, Harry Potter, Arts & Entertainment Features

July 14, 2007 | "We're the Hungarian Horntails! Are you ready to burn this place down into a fiery wreck?" yells 8-year-old Darius Wilkins, onstage with bandmates Rayn Feeney, 9, and his younger brother, Holden, 5. They're in the middle of sound check on a muggy Saturday afternoon in June at Pete's Candy Store in Brooklyn. Seconds later, there's another high-pitched yelp from Darius: "We're the Hungarian Horntails, and we're going to blow this place up with fire and rock!"

The Hungarian Horntails are not just a rock band whose members are kids. They're a wizard-rock band, one of a growing worldwide cohort -- currently numbering 183 bands -- that emerged from the tight-knit, do-it-yourself community rooted in Harry Potter fandom. These bands use MySpace for publicity, produce and release their own music, and book concerts at libraries. The Horntails are named after characters from "The Goblet of Fire," and their songs have titles like "Kill the Basilisk" and "Which Witch Is Which?" Their first album is called "Burn Voldemort's Butt."

With momentum from the release of the final book and the "Order of the Phoenix" movie, wizard rock is crescendoing. For wizard rockers and their fans, this is a time to mourn and rock out: the last summer for this community to pay tribute to Harry Potter before the series is complete, and the last summer for Web sites like The Wizrocklopedia and WizardRock.org to keep loving, obsessive track of the bands, the shows and the wizard-rock-themed festivals where muggles can rock out.

Darius, who has been strumming a guitar since age 2, started the Horntails after seeing Harry and the Potters -- the flagship band of the scene -- play a show in his hometown of Philadelphia. The Potters, aka Paul and Joe DeGeorge, aged 28 and 20, are two brothers from Norwood, Mass. Their first show, in 2002, was an impromptu performance in their parents' backyard, where they dressed up as Harry Year Four and Harry Year Seven and sang songs like "Platform 9 and 3/4ths" and "I Am a Wizard" to a smattering of pals. Since that day, the DeGeorges have run with the idea, playing libraries, house parties and rock clubs across the country. (I first wrote about the Potters in 2005, later becoming a fan and friend of the band, and an avid follower of the wizard-rock phenomenon.) This year, they will average 130 rock shows, mostly over Joe's college breaks.

With the Potters at the forefront, wizard rock has become a viable rock 'n' roll subculture over the past five years, through word of mouth and the Internet. Not to mention its value as a sidebar to mainstream media coverage of Potter books and movies. In 2005, with the publication of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," the DeGeorge brothers found themselves featured in U.S. News & World Report and Entertainment Weekly. Pitchforkmedia even called Harry and the Potters one of the "best live shows of 2005" at a moment when the hipster Web site was breaking bands like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

Meanwhile, the Potters' MySpace page got the word out, and the brothers relentlessly toured, playing anywhere that would have them. It's a common refrain among current wizard rockers that they picked up their guitars and computers after seeing the Potters; the band's zeal and exuberance make being in a rock band look super-fun.

"I just know sometime after first seeing Harry and the Potters, we wanted to sing about Harry Potter, too," said Kristina Horner, 19-year-old vocalist for the Parselmouths, who write funny songs from the point of view of snotty girls in the Slytherin house. The Parselmouths were one of the first wizard-rock bands, along with Rhode Island's Draco and the Malfoys and the Whomping Willows. The Rhode Island bands formed as a joke on the Potters at a house show.

Wizard rock has spread with the speed of an Internet meme, with bands forming as far away as Russia, Norway and Australia, and with a range of funny names like Tom Riddle and Friends, expecto patrAWESOME! (a pun on the "Expecto Patronum" incantation), and the Hermione Crookshanks Experience. The bands are 50 percent female and tend to feature teens and kids. They take the do-it-yourself ethic very seriously, as Kristine from the Hermione Crookshanks Experience details: "I really applied that motto to every aspect of my 'band.' I did everything myself, writing lyrics, guitar, piano, recording, mixing. For the CDs themselves, I did all the artwork, bought CD cases, inserts, labels, printed everything out, bent and tore along perforated edges. It was exhausting, but in a totally self-satisfying way. I had my friend make all my shirts. I make stickers myself, and at the moment, I'm sewing lots and lots of S.P.E.W. hats together." The wizard-rock scene is overwhelmingly positive. It's not as though wizard rockers are starting a band to take over the world; they're starting a band to pay homage to their favorite characters, having fun with their love of Harry Potter.

Next page: A final gig in J.K. Rowling's backyard?