Word: bande
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...that it is haraam, forbidden. Following Iran's 1979 revolution, the new Islamic Republic at first banned all music. Although most classical and traditional music was soon allowed again, it wasn't until moderate President Khatami's term in 1997 that regulations loosened up sufficiently to allow Iranian rock band to spring up in garages across Tehran. Today, even state radio runs government-approved pop music, but independent rockers and rappers have thus far failed to receive permits for concerts or album releases...
...Until the festival in 2002, we thought there are perhaps two or three other bands like us in Tehran," says Payman Mazaheri, singer of the now-dissolved band Fara, whose song "Mosquito" won first place. "All of a sudden we realized that kids across Tehran were all hard at work making rock music. It was motivating," he adds nostalgically. Unable to receive permits, Fara ultimately dissolved as band members had to go about making a living. The only top-ranking band from the 2002 contest that has survived financially is 127, and it has done so in part by touring...
...fourth album, Viva la Vida, out June 17, Martin has volunteered that his band isn't as good as Radiohead or U2 and that cultural dominance arrived before it was earned. The goal on Viva la Vida, he's said, was to "get better rather than bigger"--which explains the choice of Brian Eno as co-producer. Eno, 60, was a founding member of Roxy Music but gained his greatest fame as the composer of such endearingly odd ambient albums as Music for Airports and as the producer behind U2's sonic leap on its fourth album, The Unforgettable Fire...
Musically, Eno nudges Coldplay a few steps closer to transcendence not by opening the band up--though he did have the group record in Spanish churches and play with tablas--but by tying it down. Viva la Vida starts with the light pulse of a keyboard and a beep that could be a passing satellite. Everything seems to exist in its own silo until a rising whoosh comes along and the instruments merge into a huge harmonious collision. The track is called Life in Technicolor, and what differentiates it from previous Coldplay attempts to lasso the cosmos (Speed of Sound...
...itself critic-proof, and whether it wants to be any bigger or not, the odds are that Viva la Vida will be one of the top sellers of 2008. Ubiquity will remain theirs. But having risked a bit, Coldplay has also gained. It's pretty tough to call the band insufferable. Imperfect, maybe...