Wizard Rock and the Hurtful Podcasts

I have just listened to a Podcast called Stereo Radiation which was pointed out to me by Alex Heule from Accio-Potter. He was upset that they had broadcast an episode criticising his Accio-Potter Wrock podcast purely because it had knocked them out of the Top Ten on Podcast Alley. So I listened to this jealous and quite frankly vicious rant to see what the fuss was about and now I’m really upset about it too.

I understand that not everyone ‘gets’ the Harry Potter books and the fandom that has grown up around it and that Wizard Rock is seen as a joke to those who haven’t bothered to actually explore the genre and although I personally feel that these people are missing out on something wonderful, they are fully entitled to their opinion. However, that said, to criticise so roundly the APW podcast and Wizard Rock in general, without any real knowledge of the subject, purely because you’re jealous that they are getting more votes on a Podcast voting site is pathetic in the extreme.

The SR podcast is nothing but a badly-informed, petty and spiteful dig at the Accio-Potter podcasters and Wizard Rockers alike and their ignorance is actually almost as annoying as their criticisms. Several times before getting to the segment about APW, they mentioned that this HP podcast had knocked them from the Top Ten - obviously this is the only motivation for their spite.

Funnily enough SR themselves aren’t too keen on criticism. At one point they said they were happy to receive comments about the show and that they’d make fun of how silly people are. They also said they were pretty charitable, unless you leave a nasty comment in which case you’ll get ignored. Oh, and if you want to leave a comment on their site, you have to register with them first and all comments are moderated – and guess what - no criticisms get through. I guess that you’d have to take this course when your podcast consists not, as they like to think, of witty banter, but a spewing of bile and jealousy.

First they began with a character assassination of the APW podcasters whilst playing snippets of the show, making puerile assumptions about them. I can only imagine that these assumptions are based on their own experience – certainly the way they described the podcasters made me imagine that they were actually talking about themselves. Not quite the gentle teasing that they mentioned earlier.

More rudeness against the APW crew ensues when the SR presenters point out what they consider to be the mispronunciation of the word ‘Accio.’ Luckily for us the presenters of this HP-hating podcast have the definitive answer. This is followed by a rant that HP podcasts get into the Top Ten because they merely mention HP and that they should produce one of their own – more proof, if it were needed, that jealousy is fueling this entire edition. And then they move onto criticising the Wrock itself.

Playing ‘Ice Cream Man’ by Harry and the Potters, they first of all picked up on the band name with the inference that it was lame. Then, completely showing their ignorance of the HP books they asked why they were singing about an ice cream man – hinting that it had nothing to do with wizards apart from the band name and the words Diagon Alley in the song. Further criticism was soon poured upon HatP, with speculation that they were actually a middle-aged rock band purely doing this to cash in and rip off the gullible HP fans.

In fact it was this criticism, which appeared several times throughout the podcast, which really infuriated me the most. As anyone, who has ever vaguely had anything to do with Wizard Rock knows, the whole thing is based on friendship and community and family and love. How many of the bands have given away their music rather than sold it? And how many of the bands give at least some the money they do make to charity and good causes? Has a genre ever produced so many charity albums? And to suggest that Wizard Rock bands are doing it only to cash in is to completely denigrate an entertaining and creative genre of music.

Finally, and the thing that really made my blood boil, was the comment that wizard rockers fall into either one of two camps – those that are cashing in and those that are, in the terms of the SR presenters ‘freaks.’ A huge criticism followed about people wasting time on writing songs about HP, along with surprise that anyone would be interested in hearing or buying the music. Interestingly, they also made it sound as if it was just a few bands, producing sub quality music – rather than the thousands of bands, in the main producing very good quality songs.

Of course the presenters admitted to knowing nothing about Wizard Rock and the blurb for this particular podcast describes the Wizard Rock genre as having a narrow focus and being bizarre. However, to use that as an excuse to denigrate people is not just lame, it’s downright nasty. One of the presenters said that he wouldn’t even know where to find ten wizard rock songs, let alone eighty four minutes worth (the running time of the episode of APW that they were discussing) – perhaps he should try checking out Google. A search for ‘Wizard Rock’ brings up almost 1.5 million results – so not that hard to find.

The main reason I’m so annoyed about this podcast is that these two presenters have been so incredibly mean to a bunch of people, that although I’ve never met in real life, I am proud to call friends and they have so rudely criticised the entire genre, without even bothering to investigate whether the music is any good. To call people who have the talent to write entertaining songs freaks is probably about as low as you can go in my opinion. I guess their bile must stem from the fact that they aren’t talented enough to write anything worth listening to and they are unable to keep their jealousy from spewing out.

For them, this jealousy has obviously turned into a vendetta as their new episode also contains a rant about Accio-Potter and Wizard Rock with yet more slandering of the AP podcaster. I know these stupid little podcasts think themselves subversive and entertaining, but really they are nothing more than spiteful. Perhaps they should consider about how pathetic they sound, before they start spouting off about other people’s podcasts.