Snark Patrol
A punk tribute to the ubiquitous boy wizard raises the question of whether there is such a thing as too much sincerity.

Location: Williamsburg's Northsix
but Harry and the Potters will be making subsequent appearances in NYC and metropolitan areas all over the country during their current tour
Cost: $13
Bohemian Factor: High
Geek Factor: High

May 14, 2006

In The Tipping Point, literati darling Malcolm Gladwell speculates as to why longtime institution Sesame Street began to lag behinds its competitors in sustaining the fickle attention spans of today’s tots. One of the reasons he offers: irony and sly self-awareness. The effort to simultaneously speak to adults, in the form of punning, pop-culture references and other attempts to be “clever” (e.g. Me, Claudius; Waiting for Elmo; and Twin Beaks ) may have tragically afforded little Georgie or Tammy those critical nanoseconds to ditch high culture and go check out Teletubbies. At any rate, if a healthy smattering of irony jeopardizes the attention of children, is the converse true? That an overkill of earnestness and sincerity imperils the attention of adults?

I came to the conclusion this may well be the case at Williamsburg’s Northsix, during a concert featuring two bands whose unstoppable joie de vivre seems to stem from the incessant repetition of simple ideas and catchy musical hooks. The main attraction? Harry and the Potters: a band made up of two brothers, Paul and Joe DeGeorge, whose unruly black hair and commitment to taking the words of J.K. Rowling’s hallowed series very, very literally make them, apparently, perfectly suited to dressing up as Harry Potter and producing a sort of teen-angst fueled musical homage. Because they both claim to portray the same fictional character, Paul and Joe sport the additional quirk of singing and speaking in the second personal plural, as in: “We wrote this song on the day we found out we were a wizard.” The logic of this, as they explain it, can be accounted for through the magic of time travel, as George portrays Harry in the (yet unpublished) book seven, while Joe portrays Harry in book four. Of course.

Suffice to say, it was the first concert I have witnessed where 8-year-olds, their parents, teenagers and twenty-somethings all waved their hands in the air during the anthem “Voldemort Can’t Stop the Rock." The commercial potential of this broad demographic is indeed harnessed: as we walk in, my friends and I have the option of getting in line to buy keepsakes, such as toothbrushes that instruct their owners to “Rock the Plaque Off!”

Before they began, however, my companions and I wait patiently as Jason Anderson, a.k.a. Wolf Colonel, performs the warm-up act. While Wolf Colonel’s relentless energy and puppy-like eagerness for audience involvement leave much to be admired, my worries regarding the Lack or Irony Problem were elevated as their repertoire quickly blurred into endless permutations of “Whoa whoa” “yeah” “oh oh oh” and “sha la la.”

“CAN I GET A ‘YEAH?’” the band requests; successfully rousing a segment of Northsix’s audience into a sort of frenzy that reminded me of a junior high “Battle of the Bands,” while the rest of us sip Coronas, inert with apathy. Wolf Colonel apparently specializes in witty wordplay, such as rhyming “Jason” with “Are you still waitin’” and “night” with “mosquito bite.” They offered insightful advice like “Don’t forget to live!” and - my personal favorite- a tribute to Texas that, if I heard correctly, pleads for the day when there will be “clouds instead of guns and robots and fascists." (“El Paso is a lot of things,” noted my friend Sarah, a former Texan, “but fascist isn’t really one of them.”)

It’s not particularly fair for me to pick on Wolf Colonel, which clearly is not aiming to be the Silver Jews. I am succumbing to a growing fear that I will be stuck in a room full of unmitigated saccharine earnestness for another two hours. The weight of expectations continues to mount; I spot a young woman wearing a T-shirt which bears the words “My Wizard Scar Still Burns For You.” Could the much ballyhooed Harry and the Potters, who boast such straightforward lyrics as “We’ve got to save Ginny Weasley from the basilisk!” possibly entertain for more than ten minutes, without some inkling of snark?

Fortunately, as they say, “It’s not what you do; it’s the way that you do it,” (Ah, yes, how dare I accuse artists of invoking clichés when bloggers can be just as trite? How I love hypocrisy.)

“Our songs are about sticking it to the man” they announce, “the man” being Harry Potter’s nemesis Voldemort, who is also the enemy of, apparently, “pizza, babies and rock music,” conveniently equating the series’ villain with every authoritative parent who unjustly denies our right to junk food, innocence and well, partying in general. Having instilled the children present with a healthy sense of rebellion before they reach their ninth birthday, they proceed to buoyantly run in and out of the audience, and expound, ballad-like, upon the various adolescent plights our Hero is subjected to, in painstaking detail: alienation, the desire to be like everyone else, the pain of rejection, the yearning to make out with a hot girl.

Paul and Joe steer clear of cynicism and emanate nothing but reverence for the Harry Potter series so revered by their young fans. Wearing the attire of prep school nightmares, baggy gray sweaters over neckties, they are savvy enough to reserve the mockery for themselves. 18-year-old Joe is particularly impressive, pounding histrionically on the keyboards and channeling a kind of charming Woody Allen-esque nebbish-ness. He banters in meandering soliloquies about the profundity of their mission, feigning sheepish awkwardness, as in “Music comes straight from your heart because...um, that where the most rockin’ things are forged.” The acknowledgment of the inherent nerdiness of their agenda becomes, well, cool, and they both seem to know it. (As a random aside, the elder Potter is a PhD candidate in chemical engineering.) Although they have told MTV that their aim, in part, is to promote reading, which I do not doubt, they do not seem to have any trouble picking up girls.

After their encore, they’ve even made a few converts. “I’m going to buy one of those toothbrushes!” my friend announces, and we head back to the souvenir stand, because that, apparently, is where the most rockin' things are forged.