I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: WEAVES-Tiny Desk Concert #539 (June 10, 2016).

There’s been quite a few mellow bands on Tiny Desk as of late so this rocking quartet from Toronto are a fun change of pace

And boy do they stand out.  Lead singer Jasmyn Burke is wearing a psychedelic dress and has a pretty wild afro.  She sings in a way that seems like maybe she could be doing something else, but always with a wry smirk.  And her voice is unusual–almost talking, but sometimes hitting slightly off-sounding notes (and at times seeming almost childish) but it all works really well within the songs.  And then there’s the music.  A bass, guitar and drum, and Morgan Waters, the guitarist, playing as if he’s doing several different songs at once.

“Coo Coo” features some picked guitar parts, some distorted chord parts, a part that mirrors her vocals (during the delightful chorus of “You’re so coo coo / I’m so coo coo  / I’m so crazy.”  And then there’s the part during the final chorus which features him playing something different after each time she says “I’m so coo coo” –trash metal guitar, simple guitar lines, then squeaky fractured notes.   It’s hard to know who to watch more.  And the bassist is no slouch either, as he keeps up pretty nicely with the wild playing.

As they start the next song, “Shithole,” the drummer starts the wrong one but they correct him and say that they are gong to play “Shithole” in this nice building.  It opens with a delicate guitar riff and a pulsing bass line.  The song is surprisingly mellow until the middle section when a noisy solo kicks in, but this song is primarily bass and vocals with a really abrupt ending

“One More” is a fast punky song which is again mostly bass and drums until the loud distorted guitars check in to accompany the vocals. I get a kick out of the odd way she sings “One more” (accompanied by a suitably squeaky guitar).

Mostly Jasmyn doesn’t seem to be singing all that hard until portions so this song when all four are going a little crazy.

They are fun band that I need to explore some more–I’ll bet they are a lot of fun live.

[READ: March 1, 2016] Zahra’s Paradise

This book is a fierce indictment of the Iranian Islamic revolution and the questionable election that took place in 2009 which brought Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power.

It was written (by Amir) and drawn (by Khalil) pseudonymously so that they could avoid prosecution (or worse) in their home country of Iran.  In fact, while the story was amazing and really powerful, it was the afterword that I found so important.

But the story first.  And the part that will make no one want to read this book–a bag full of puppies is killed.  Yup, getting that out of the way right from the start.  And in fact, there doesn’t really seem to be a lot of justification for it.  It gets referenced a few times in the story, but nothing else is quite as graphic as the prologue (so you can skip that if you don’t want to see an image that you won’t be able to get out of your head).

The bulk of the story is set in June of 2009, right after the vote and subsequent protests about said vote.  The elections were on the 12th and this story (which takes the form of a blog) begins on the 16th.

It has been four days since the election and the massive protests and our blogger’s brother Mehdi has not returned home.  His mother has been a nervous wreck, understandably.  She has gone to the site of the protests to look for evidence or to see if anyone recognizes Mehdi.  She and the blogger went to hospitals.  And all they saw was that protesters were being dragged out by the basiji–some of them could not even walk but they were dragged out anyway.

The more questions she asks, the more dead ends she meets, with people telling her that there were millions of people in Freedom Square, how can she hope to find anyone?

But it turns out that even though everyone is afraid of the police and the new rulers, some people are willing to promote acts of disobedience.

The blogger goes to a photocopy shop to print copies of his brother’s face.  The owner is happy to oblige and then doesn’t even charge him.   He is against the guards and the police and he also proves to be a decent man.  When a basiji falls and is about to get beaten, he brings the man inside.  To make it look good, he shouts, “He’s all mine” and then he breaks the basiji’s nose–but the guard knows that he saved his life.  This actually comes back to him later in the story.

It turns out there’s also a woman who goes there. She is beautiful and unafraid to march down the street uncovered.

Some of the most interesting chapters look at Iranian daily life–like the congestion of the streets and the role of taxi drivers.  And of course the unforgivably slow bureaucracy.  In order for anyone to get anywhere they have to know someone.  So when their mom meets someone at the Iman’s office, she is able to connect her to someone with some details about what might actually be going on.

But these scenes were a mild relief from the tension of the main story.   By June 24, they still know precious little, until they go to a Welcome Home party for someone who was with Mehdi in prison.  He reveals some details (shocking) about his imprisonment and gives them a bit of hope that they might yet find Mehdi.

And then the woman from the copy shop comes to offer her assistance. (this scene has a some mild nudity which surprised me since the rest of the story is so chaste). Turns out that she has been sleeping with someone who (she later learned) was part of the whole horrible event.  She is able to offer some evidence about what has been going on.

And that’s when they learn just how much corruption and terror has been going on and just how much repression has been happening under the new rule.

The story is staggering and really horrifying, although there is a small sense of joy in the epilogue.  But the book is so well done and the art is quite beautiful.
While this is a completely fictional account–none of the characters are real–the story is certainly a real indictment of the Islamic revolution which has really destabilized Iran.

Incidentally, the title of the book, “Zahra’s Paradise” refers to a massive cemetery on the outskirts of Tehran.  I wish that that had been explicitly stated earlier (it’s in the back of the book).

Then end of the book contains a glossary (very useful), some explanations of Iranian names, and an afterword which explain the impetus for the story and the historical events of the 2009 election

The final pages contain the Omid memorial–nearly 17,000 people who have been executed, shot while demonstrating or assassinated since he establishment of the Islamic republic of Iran in 1979.

This is a fantastic book and yet another amazing release from First Second.  #10yearsof01