Harry And The Potters @ Urbis, Manchester

Seeing Harry and the Potters was one of the most "different" gigs I have ever been to, probably. As you can tell by the name, the group is inspired by the Harry Potter books. In fact, all the song-lyrics are based on characters or episodes from the story.

Don't believe me? Here are some lyrics for you:

From The Human Hosepipe:

so we said there with all the couples kissing
and soon things began deteriorating
and you began turning into the human hosepipe

From Wizard Chess:

I don't want to go home for Christmas this year
I don't wanna see my family
...
I just wana stay at school with my best friends Ron
oh-oh-oh
we'll spend our Christmas playing wizard chess
...
oh-oh-oh
we'll spend our Christmas being invisible
oh-oh-oh
be invisible this Christmas

(my favourite song)

I enjoyed observing every single detail of the gig. Let me give you some facts: The Urbis is a museum. The band played in the entrance hall. Generally, they perform in theaters and libraries rather than concert hall or gig venues. Their audience comprises approximately 13 to 16 years-old kids. And oh, how these kids looked: Black eyeliner on allmost all faces, some in really colourful clothes, socks with different colours, but some dressed in black. Almost all guys with long hair, almost all girls with at least two different hair colours. Spome wore self-made t-shirts with lines from the books. Hard to tell if any dressed up as actual characters, hard to tell for me, at least. But there was no Harry Potter in the audience. And rightly so, because the kids knew there would be two Harry Potters on stage!

Harry and the Potters is actually two brothers (and a drummer), who look very much alike each other, and who did their best to look like Harry Potter. Dark curly hair, glasses, a scar drawn on the forehead. The even wore the Hogwarts school uniform. They looked really nice.

Okay, so what do we have so far: emo-kids going to a gig at three pm, two brothers, I'd say in their late twenties, dressed up as a adolescent wizard and a performance in a museum. What did I save for the end: the music!

Let me tell you, the music simply was a very sweet surprise for me. Listen to the songs the band has on myspace and you'll get no idea of what it is like to see them live. Live they rock! Or, more acuratly, they punkrock! They rarely played a song that was longer than one-and-a-half minute. The two Potters jumped around and screamed, there even was some serious moshing going on in the audience at one point. Lyrics were spit out, microphone stands were broken, the singer ran off-stage to dance and sing and cry with the kids, no reservedness, no timidity at all. And I thought: thanks somebody is saving these emo kids from teenage angst and makes them angry instead!