Thanks to everyone who has been ordering copies of our new disc!

I’ll be traveling for the next 2 weeks, so any orders placed between June 25th and July 9th will be filled when I return. I guess we’ll continue the $5 CD sale until about then, so go ahead and buy some stuff!

-paul

Dear friends,

We started our band nearly 7 years ago on a Saturday afternoon in June of 2002. When we sat down at the kitchen table and bashed out a handful of songs about Harry Potter, we never could have guessed at the incredible ways that our lives would be changed. But hey, I guess that’s what makes life so awesome. Over the past 7 years, we’ve made so many amazing friendships and met so many amazing people, and, if you’ll excuse our immodesty, played some pretty amazing shows as well. 499 shows to be exact (though not all would necessarily be considered “amazing”).

Anyway, 500 is a pretty monumental number and that kind of deserves a special occasion. Thusly, we take the stage this coming Friday in our hometown of Norwood, Massachusetts, mere blocks from our boyhood home, in the very elementary school that we attended so long ago, in the same cafetorium where Paul sang the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” theme song in the 5th grade musical and where Joe witnessed Ellen Greely throw up through her recorder (@vomitwords) during the 3rd grade recital. Yes indeed, our 500th show takes place in Norwood’s Oldham Elementary School this Friday evening, and we’ll be joined by many of the amazing friends that we’ve met along the road over the past 7 years.

We’ll continue the celebration by rolling into Brooklyn, NY and Philadelphia, PA this weekend for another couple shows, so please consider joining us! All shows this weekend are with the Whomping Willows, the Remus Lupins, and Pottercast!

06.19.09 | Norwood, MA | Oldham Elementary School | 165 Prospect Street | Norwood, MA | ALL AGES | 6pm | $10

This will be our 500th show!!!! No advanced tix, but plenty of room for all. With our good friends the Whomping Willows, the Remus Lupins and Pottercast!

06.20.09 | Brooklyn, NY | the Bell House | ALL AGES | 5pm | $10

Sweet NYC show with the Whomping Willows, the Remus Lupins and Pottercast!

06.21.09 | Philadelphia, PA | First Unitarian Church | ALL AGES | 5pm | $10

Sick Philly show with the Whomping Willows, the Remus Lupins and Pottercast!

———

Seven years is a long time. Thank you so much to everyone who has stuck with us, come to our shows, sang along, bought our records, told their friends and librarians about us. You guys are the best and you are the reason we’ve played 500 shows instead of 50.

We hope to see you again soon,
Paul and Joe DeGeorge
Harry and the Potters

Hey guys!

I hope you are as pumped for summer as we are! We’ve got some KILLER shows coming up in the northeast during the next month. Please check out our tour dates and come see us!

But the biggest news is that Priori Incantatem is finally available for purchase, both here on our website and through the legendary iTunes! But remember, physical copies come with that awesome bonus disc we mentioned. You totally can’t get that on iTunes. It’s only available here, in our not so fancy webstore (or if you come to one of our shows).

To celebrate this momentous occasion, we are having a SUPER-MAGICAL-AWESOME sale. If you buy the new album (Priori Incantatem), all of our other CDs can be yours for the bargain price of $5 each! WOW! $5 per CD! You heard it right! No sub-prime mortgages needed to afford these discs! They’re only $5!!! Actually, you don’t even have to buy the new disc (but we do encourage it strongly)! Pretty much everything in the store is $5 right now! Buy something! And if you already own everything, buy it anyway and give it to a friend. Spread the love. This is happening RIGHT NOW if you just click the “Store” link to you left.

Not to harp on the new CD, but we’re really pretty pleased with how it came out and wanted to share some photos so you can see how badass it all looks.

The discs are beautifully packaged in a 100% PCW recycled gatefold sleeves.

And we mentioned the exclusive BONUS disc right?

I know dude, it looks totally dope! Limited to 1000 copies and each includes a double-sided, typewritten copy of the liner notes.

Seriously, what are you waiting for! This thing is only $10, and all our other discs are $5. Do your duty as a patriot! Support the American economy! This offer won’t last long and isn’t available in stores.

All kidding aside, we think you’ll really enjoy this. In fact, please let us know what you think once you’ve gotten your copy!

Thanks!!!
Paul and Joe

Hey guys,

Sorry to tease you guys with that artwork below. I was just pretty pumped at the prospect of releasing a new disc! I’ve been working on assembling this album for about a year now, so I’m really happy that it’s finally come together. I just mailed off the masters this morning, so hopefully we’ll have these back from the pressing plant soon!

So what is Priori Incantatem?

It’s pretty much everything we’ve ever recorded that has not appeared on one of our full-length albums or our EP club discs.

Here’s the tracklist:

1. Problem Solving Skillz (2002 demo)
2. New Wizard Anthem (club mix)
3. the Blood of a Prince
4. Sectumsempra
5. Horcruxes
6. Don’t Believe It
7. the Forbidden Forest Hockey League
8. the Hogwarts Tonsil Hockey Team
9. My Teacher is a Werewolf (rock version)
10. the Stone
11. Let’s Drink to Aragog
12. the Cave
13. Vernon Dursely
14. Bacon
15. Maybe Kreacher Will Bring Me a Sandwich
16. My New School
17. Unicorn Blood
18. Touch the Brains
19. Bertie Botts
20. Diagon Alley
21. the Wrath of Hermione
22. It Ain’t Easy

The recordings on this disc span nearly 7 years of recording history! By my count, 9 of the tracks on this disc have been previously released, either on compilations or on our two out-of-print 7″s. We’re especially excited that the Scarred for Life 7″ will finally be available on disc. Blood of a Prince is one of my favorite songs that we’ve ever recorded. Blast it!

The rest of the songs on the disc were recorded at various points over the last 7 years. A few of them were left off previous albums and a few (tracks 10-12) were recorded just for this disc! So there’s some new stuff, some old stuff, some rare stuff, and some weird stuff. All-in-all, it’s a pretty fun listen.

Call us “old school”, but we still love owning physical media - especially when it’s something as pretty as these discs will be - so we’ve decided to release this as a 2-disc set. That’s right, everyone who buys this album (on CD!) will actually get two discs! The second disc will be exclusive to the CD release and will not be available on iTunes.

Here’s what the Disc 2 tracklist looks like:

Demos 2003-2009
1. Save Ginny Weasley
2. These Days are Dark
3. Rocking at Hogwarts
4. Problem Solving Skillz (Skillz to pay the Billz)
5. the Godfather, Part II
6. Stick it to Dolores
7. the Missing Arm of Viktor Krum
8. Smootchy Smootchy Pukey Pukey
9. Monkey Suit
10. This books is so Awesome
11. Platform 9 and 3/4 (dutch version)
12. Hermoine Screws Up the Polyjuice Potion
13. Hagrid
14. Phoenix Tears
15. Ridin’ in the Night
16. Phoenix Song

Disc 2 is full of almost entirely unreleased demos. They’re silly, they’re sloppy, and they’re spontaneous. Some songs were actually recorded in the van while we were on tour! I love some of these as much as the versions that we put on our albums, and I think you guys will enjoy them too.

OK, this post got really long. I hope you’re getting pumped about these discs! Hopefully we’ll have them for sale in a few weeks. If you’d like to be emailed when they’re available, just add your name to our email list (right beneath the Squid-menu to your left).

Stay tuned!
-paul