This interview was originally made in a podcast, but some naughty Death Eaters stole all the episodes from their online storage. What is left is the transcript below.
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Who is in the band and what they do?
Marauder:
I'm Marauder and I do a fair amount of the vocals, a lot of the lyrics, and the other person in the band is
Mr Marauder:
Mr Marauder and I do some backup vocals and some main vocals and some crazy vocals.
Marauder:
And he probably should be doing more vocals with which were working on. He's the one who could actually get cast in high school musicals and that was not me. Musiclywise we've had a little bit of an instrument crisis but that is coming to an end. We usually make the music electronically, and that's another of the things that I do.
How did you come up with these names, Marauder and Mr Marauder?
Marauder:
We're Marauders because back in 2002 when I first went into Harry Potter fandom I couldn't decide whether I wanted a name that related to Sirius Black or Remus Lupin so I just went with Marauder. Mr Marauder's pretty much only fandom activity is the band so he has no name of his own, he's just Mr Marauder because that's how I've referred to him online for several years. So he was fine with that so decided to keep it.
How did you get into wizard rock?
Marauder:
I'm pretty sure I first heard about wizard rock when someone was talking about it on a livejournal entry. I know for a fact that it was in 2006. The first thought I had about wizard rock was sort of like, oh wow, why did I not think of that first because that is such a good idea. I think there should be a total expansion of wizard rock. I mean, I know there's wizard rock, there's trock with the Dr Who stuff and twi-rock, but I think it should get to the stage where you can find a song just about any book or book series that has enough people who read it. I would love to see an explosion of other book based bands. I think that would be one of the coolest things ever.
I started making wizard rock at the beginning of my first year of law school, which is retrospect probably was not the best time to start. But I started because I'd seen a whole bunch of different slash songs and although I like the ones that there were I was really surprised that no one had ever done a Percy/Oliver song, which might not sound like it was such an unbelievable thing but I'd found Draco/Blaise and Percy/Crouch and Neville/Colin. So I was like, with all those, there's no Percy/Oliver song? So I was thinking, all right, I'm gonna make it even if it sucks. And Mr Marauder volunteered to be in the band, which I was surprised about because I didn't ask him because I didn't want it to be like "oh my girlfriend made me be in her Harry Potter slash band and sing about gay stuff".
Okay, well that's probably not the most common story behind getting into a wrock band, but well, I don't have the most common story either, so...
What's the story behind your band's name?
Marauder:
For some reason the line in Goblet of Fire, where Harry goes over to Cedric and tells him "Cedric, the first task is dragons", that line was kind of stuck in my head. So when I was trying to come up with a name for the band, that came back to me, and I was like, maybe it could be The First Task Is Dragons. I just really liked the way it sounded and I went with it.
What kind of topics, characters and themes you write songs about?
Marauder:
A lot of what we do is different slash songs with slash pairings because I have fun thinking of them and Mr Marauder has fun contributing lyric ideas. The other thing we do is that we've done one song called "If I Were A Snitch, Man" where Mr Marauder was the voice of
Mr Marauder:
Viktor Krum. We came up with the idea, I think in a car ride or something, I can't even remember now.
Marauder:
It was one the way to get his dogs from dog day care.
Mr Marauder:
Okay, to go get the dogs from dog day care. I've been thinking of doing more crazy songs vocally because it's fun to try to do some impersonation stuff.
Marauder:
He's got a good Snape voice too so hopefully that'll be showing up in the future.
This question is from Tamara of the wrock band Obliviate!: How do you usually come across a new idea for a song?
Mr Marauder:
One of the ways I get ideas for wizard rock songs is kind of a little "wrock thief". I steal ideas, so you better watch out! I'm gonna steal yours next!
Marauder:
Some people call it inspiration, he calls it theft.
Mr Marauder:
Exactly.
Marauder:
That's why were Marauders.
I don't think I can really explain coz I don't think I really understand how I come up with ideas for songs. Part of it is probably because I have ADD which I didn't get diagnosed with until I was 22. I have ADD so my brain, at the same time it doesn't stick on things necessarily for a very long period of time unless I'm sort of hyperfocused on it. Because it's going between the one thing and the other thing, I think I come up with comparisons or ideas. The time I realized that I was thinking about Crabbe and Goyle and something Jewish related, then all of a sudden the phrase "Rabbi Crabbe and Goyle the Mohel" sprang into my mind. So before you know we had a song about that. My brain just kind of connects things like that and then I'm like, oh that could be really interesting, and then it turns out to be a song.
Have you played any live shows?
Marauder:
At the moment we haven't played any live shows which is mostly a result of the intrument crisis. The instrument crisis has been terrible. I have to tell you about all these instruments we have and we can't play. We have a piano which I can play, I took lessons from first grade all the way through the end of high school. But it's out of tune and the lower keys echo funnily. We have an organ but that is maybe from the 70s and the keys make these clicking sounds when you play them. We have another organ which is...I seriously believe it's from the 1800s. It's an old antique organ that my dad bought for a hundred bucks on an auction. Mr Marauder played the trumpet in high school band but now his little sister has taken over the trumpet and has germs all over it - no offence Mr Marauder's little sister. I have a recorder which I had to play in fourth grade but my fingers hurt trying to cover all those little holes all the way. We have a guitar that used to belong to Mr Marauder's mom but half of the strings are broken. We have a scary amount of instruments at our disposal but they are disposable. That's why we haven't played live shows. I would love to do it. Mr Marauder used to be way more reluctant about it. He used to be "no, I'm not doing" but now he's gotten to the point where he's like "well, maybe if we practised a lot and the instrument thing works out better". I'm like, okay, that I can live with. So hopefully one day we will have a live show.
What makes your band unique?
I'd say that one thing that makes us unique is probably the sheer variety of different subjects we do besides the slash stuff and the Krum stuff. We did electronic instrumental album called "Bewitched Garden" which happened when I realized that I could come up with twelve different female Harry Potter characters whose names were either fruits or flowers. That was a shorter album but I was really satisfied with it. We've done songs about..."The Real Story of Aberforth's Goat (Live in Hogsmeade)", and one called "Luna's Song for Marietta". We've done a variety of ones. We're doing an album called "Skeeterphilia" at the moment which is gonna be a lot of fun, I hope you're gonna like it. It's kind of a gossip themed album so the songs are about gromance and who's dating whom, who's disgraced in the eyes of Voldemort, all the scandal at Hogwarts and fun stuff like that.
Who are your favourite wizard rockers?
Marauder:
I could probably sit here for a really long time listing them but I'll just pick a few. I'd say The Sectumsempras, The Purebloods, The Parselmouths, The Curse Breakers, The Black Sisters, The Gringotts Grrls (oh, Gringotts Grlls, thank you for putting back "Gilderoy" in the player for me, that was very cool of you), Half-Blood Princess, Hawthorn and Holly, Snuffles and the Furry Little Problem and Ninen 3/4 which is a pretty new band, they're not super new but they're pretty new, just had two songs so far and one of them is called "The Prince's Tale" which I have listened to insane number of times in a row and I'm not even a Snape fan. So that gives an indication of how good that song is.
What's the funniest exprience you've had with wizard rock?
Mr Marauder:
The funniest experience I've had doing wizard rock has probably been making the lyrics to that aforementioned "If I Were A Snitch, Man" song. It was really lot of fun making up the lyrics and then try to hash out the Viktor Krum voice. It was kind of fun and turned out pretty good, I wish I could redo a couple of parts now but...
Marauder:
I think it's fine and I would like to say
Mr Marauder:
No, no...
Marauder:
...be quiet. I'd like to say that Dawlish and the Archies said it was one of their favourite filks of all time. So if you wanna argue with Dawlish and the Archies, that's fine but...
Mr Marauder:
Ok. Allright.
What future plans do you have with your music?
Marauder:
One idea that we have, that we started about a few months ago, is that we're thinking that we might do two songs, in the first one a plant is in love with Neville, and the second song is Neville tells the plant why they can never be together.
Mr Marauder:
I was thinking of doing a filk of The Bee Gee's "Staying Alive", that would be cool because it's disco Neville, and that's awesome.
Marauder:
He was inspired by listening to "Death Eaters Disco" by The Purebloods.
Mr Marauder:
Absolutely.
Marauder:
He's listened to it for the first time today and about two seconds in he goes "allright, this is already a good disco song".
Is there anything you'd like to say to your fans and fellow wizard rockers?
Marauder:
We love our fans, we're really thrilled we have fans. We really love making wizard rock for you guys. We hope to keep doing it for a long time. "Skeeterphilia" is probably going to be released pretty soon. We're working on more stuff, we're working on slash songs, we're working on instrumental stuff. So thanks for listening, we hope you stick around 'cause we plan on doing the same.
ALBUMS (all of which can be downloaded for free on their bandcamp site)
- Slash Bash (2009)
- Karkaroff's Body In A Shack Up North (2009)
- Bewitched Garden (2010)
- Skeeterphilia (upcoming album)