Word: popped
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...Inside, the heat is on - both literally and figuratively. An audience of mostly twentysomething men and women is here to see Mohsen Namjoo, the new local sensation whose music combines classical Persian music and poetry with such Western imports as rock and blues. While dozens of traditional, classical and pop music concerts are staged in Tehran every year, rock's standing is still unsettled. What has made this event permissible under the conservative strictures that govern the arts in Iran is that it's supposed to be a formal critique of Namjoo's work, whose sudden and immense popularity prompted...
...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...
...Iran's godfather of pop, producer Mohsen Rajabpour, has no patience for musicians' complaints about permits. "If you try hard, you'll get a permit. Give me another year and I'll produce a rap album," he says self-assuredly, adding that the reason rock and rap haven't been officially successful is because Iranians prefer pop music. "Iranians are instinctively drawn to emotionality in music," he says, leaning back in the executive armchair of his slick black-walled record company...
...Rajabpour's observation on Iranian tastes would certainly help explain the popularity in Iran of Chris de Burgh, the Irish balladeer best remembered for his early '80s saccharine pop hit "Lady in Red". The pop mogul has been hosting De Burgh in Iran this past week, and a concert tour planned for the fall would make the British singer the first Western pop star to perform in Iran since 1979. De Burgh will share the stage with Iranian pop giants Arian, on whose forthcoming album he has collaborated - in one song, De Burgh even sings "I love you," in Persian...
...neat trick, turning discipline into ecstasy, and Coldplay executes it with enough variations to keep things surprising. Strings pop up everywhere--not to grease your tear ducts but to enrich the sound and drive the countermelodies. After years of playing to the back row, guitarist Jonny Buckland has discovered that guitars come with more than one pedal, and his work on Lovers in Japan and Violet Hill is admirably precise. Will Champion, whose previous claim to fame was having the greatest drummer name of all time, bangs away on his kettles and timpani like a man celebrating his release from...