Tim Judah has a backgrounder in the Telegraph (UK) on The baby boomers who want to rock Teheran:
Garage rock is big in Teheran. In earlier times and different circumstance, garages, heavily padded for sound, might have been used for secret printing presses to churn out samizdat papers or revolutionary literature, but not in Teheran today. If heavy rock is your thing, find a garage.The imperialist forces infilitrate yet another peaceful Islamic republic. But don't worry, the mullahs are on the case:
Here, in the Islamic republic, heavy rock is officially considered moral pollution. So it goes underground. Blasting at their drums and electric guitars, the heavily sweating crew from Sokoote-e Shargh, which means Oriental Silence, meet three times a week to practise in a sound proofed room inside an underground garage.
They are not alone. There are scores of other underground bands of all types across Teheran. Technically, playing in an underground garage, provided there are no unmarried girls and boys dancing together or drinking, may not be illegal.
But no one is really sure what is legal or not in Iran any more. The band once got permission to play a small concert at an arts college, but they would never be allowed to sing in English or legally distribute a CD.
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Indeed a social revolution is taking place. In the wake of the Islamic revolution of 1979 and the attack on Iran by Saddam Hussein in 1980, the mullahs urged women to produce a new generation of Islamic martyrs. But their project has gone horribly wrong.
Today two thirds of Iran's 70 million people are under 30 and, like Oriental Silence, chafing at the restrictions imposed by the state.
Satellite television, including broadcasts from several Iranian exile stations in America, has opened a new world to young Iranians. Satellite dishes are illegal, but the rule is flouted.
Today 1.75 million Iranians also have access to the internet, but in five years that figure is expected to grow to five million. Wherever there are computers you can see girls wearing the officially prescribed Islamic dress.
But every Iranian has a public and a private face. Peer at what they are doing on the internet and it is as if they are the inhabitants of a parallel nation.
With headphones clamped over their headscarves and chadors they are bobbing about while happily downloading music by the rapper Eminem or internet chatting with their boyfriends across town.
In the past two months the hardliners have been flexing their muscles. Several papers have been shut down and a fleet of new Land Cruisers with aggressive morality enforcing policemen inside have made their presence felt.Hmmm ... sounds familiar.
Also, in mosques across the Teheran and the rest of the country, young men from the Basij, a militia loyal to Mr Khamenei, swear they will defend the Islamic revolution until death.
If reforms stay stalled then one day they may yet be called upon to do so.
