![]() I remember on Yahoo! Messenger there were these chat rooms, and we’d have meetings. One of the really great bands I heard for the first time then was this band from Bandar Abbas, a port city in the south where I would never have imagined anything cool happening. Raam: It was an online competition, everyone submitted tracks. NA: How did they set it up? Did Tehran Avenue put on a big concert? ![]() Kodi: I was too young to even be in that scene, so when I heard all those bands, I was like, “We actually have underground bands!?” Everybody shared that belief, “There’s no punk band, there’s no metal band, we’re the only ones.” We all thought we were the only band in the country. That was the first time anyone in Iran had heard all these bands at the same time. One of the big things was the underground music festival that Tehran Avenue held in 2000. Raam: It was very isolated at first, simply because you were in, like, basements. Were you collaborating with people, or was it isolated? NA: Can you tell us more about that scene, the one that seems to be ending now? The late ’90s scene, when you guys came together, during the Khatami years. The authorities and the government are aware that this is happening they’re closing things down. People are on the radar now like never before. But I think you could almost say this movie was the death of the underground. There are many who really aren’t talented or amazing, too - whether or not they deserve to be heard is for other people to decide. Raam: Obviously, the movie gave exposure to a lot of artists, and there are so many talented musicians in the underground scene in Iran. They talked to you guys, right? Do you think the film will have an effect? NA: We were curious in part because of No One Knows about Persian Cats, that movie about the Iranian rock scene that was ostensibly based on a lot of research. ![]() We want to have fans of our music, not our story. But at the end of the day, we want our music to speak for itself. It has this sort of exotic, Oriental feel to it. I mean, obviously the story is really interesting to people who aren’t familiar with what’s going on in the underground scene back home. But we did go through a lot of hard times back in Iran, getting to where we are. We get so much attention just because of where we’re from, which is probably unfair to a lot of other bands who work just as hard as us but don’t get a chance to be heard. Raam: It’s funny, I just sent an email to our manager today saying we wanted to stop being introduced as an Iranian band…. ![]() Negar Azimi: How do you feel about being marketed as an Iranian band? Not long ago, after seeing them perform live at the 92nd Street Y in New York, we invited them down to our headquarters, where the Iranian members of our staff discussed with them the ins and outs of Persian pop, the perils of publicity, and why Pink Floyd is still the biggest thing in Iran since Milan Kundera. Last summer, they toured the US supporting aging gothsters Sisters of Mercy this summer, they’re at or near the top of the bill themselves. And they’re featured, indirectly, in Bahman Ghobadi’s film No One Knows about Persian Cats. They’re signed to Narnack Records, a label that also features old-school heavies like Lee “Scratch” Perry and The Slits. Hypernova are back in the news with the release of their debut CD, Through the Chaos. ABC News called them “Iran’s Latest Ambassadors” - ambassadors from a land where loving rock and roll might get you fined or flogged or even jailed. American–Iranian relations were at an especially low ebb, and four fresh-faced (if swarthy) young men from Tehran were a perfect foil for saber-rattling Fox newsmen and other media sensationalists. So perhaps it was not just the timeliness of Hypernova’s touchdown on American shores that set off a media frenzy in April 2007. Whatever else contemporary rock music might be, dangerous it is not.Įxcept, of course, if you happen to be an aspiring rocker in the Islamic Republic of Iran, after the president of your country effectively makes it a crime to play rock music at all. For the aspiring rocker, that fairytale has had a sad ending - whatever promise or menace might once have attached to words like alternative, independent, or underground have melted into air. Once upon a time in America, rock music was dangerous, subversive - revolutionary, even. ![]()
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