A benefit and memorial concert for The Yellow Dogs will be held at Brooklyn Bowl on Monday, November 18th. It’ll feature performances from Nada Surf, TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone, and Here We Go Magic’s Luke Temple, as well as DJ sets by The Rapture, The Men, Jonathan Toubin, !!!, and more.
On Monday, two members of the Iran-bred, Brooklyn-based indie band, along with their friend, were shot and killed. The gunman, Ali Akbar Mohammadi Rafie ‘Rafi’, was a one-time member of The Yellow Dogs’ sister band Free Keys, but was dismissed from the band last year.
Proceeds from the concert will go to the families of the deceased band members, the hospital bills of Sasan Sadeghpourosko, who was wounded in the shooting, and the two surviving members of Yellow Dogs.
The Yellow Dogs, from left, Arash and Soroush Farazmand, killed on Monday, and Siavash Karampour and Koory Mirz. Photo: AP
The Yellow Dogs is an Iranian rock band, formed in 2006. Members include Siavash Karampour (vocals) and Koory Mirzeai (bass), as well as brothers Soroush Farazmand (guitar) and Arash Farazmand (drums) until the two were murdered on November 11, 2013.
The Yellow Dogs were from Tehran, Iran. They sang in English and played Western instruments, citing Joy Division, Talking Heads and The Rapture as an influence. Their music was not approved by Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, and was therefore illegal. They performed in Bahman Ghobadi’s Cannes Un Certain Regard award-winning film, No One Knows About Persian Cats and were interviewed by Reza Sayah for CNN before leaving Iran.
On 8-9 December, 2009, the band was interviewed by the U.S. government at the U.S. embassy in Istanbul, Turkey and their comments about the Iranian Green Movement Protesters, Iranian counter-culture, freedom of expression, trends in drug usage and music in the authoritarian state were reported in an unclassified U.S. State Department document later released by Wikileaks titled, “Iran/culture: So You Want To Be A Rock And Roll Star.” The U.S. government officer interviewing the band members described them as “astute, well-informed, and resourceful.”
The Yellow Dogs played their first aboveground (legal) concert at the Peyote club, in Istanbul, Turkey January 2010. Two days later, they flew to New York City. Their second aboveground concert was at the Cameo Gallery, in Brooklyn, New York. Since then, they played Santos Party House (Gojira’s first gig in NYC) and the Delancey in New York. And they played the Wave in Austin, TX as part of the SXSW festival. They played the 92nd St. Y Tribeca in New York in an afterparty for the U.S. opening of No One Knows About Persian Cats. Also on the bill for this concert were the band, Hypernova, who are also from Tehran. Koory and Looloosh were part of the original line-up of Hypernova. But they did not leave Iran when other Hypernova members departed for the United States.
April 13, 2010 Milan Records released the No One Knows About Persian Cats motion picture soundtrack. The Yellow Dogs track “New Century” is included in the motion picture soundtrack, and bassist Koory appears on the CD cover and on the movie poster. IFC Films released the movie on demand on April 14, 2010 and in theaters on April 16, 2010.
Ali Eskandarian, a performer who was not part of the band, was among those killed. Photo: AP
On November 11, 2013, a shooting took place in Brooklyn that involved Yellow Dogs band members. According to band manager Ali Salehezadeh, guitarist Soroush Farazmand and drummer Arash Farazmand, along with Ali Eskandarian, a musician friend who was not part of the band, were killed by another musician named Raefe Akhbar. Originally, media reports described Akhbar as a former band member who had been thrown out of the band three days before. In later reports, however, it was stated that he was not a member of the Yellow Dogs, but had been kicked out of a different band (Free Keys) the previous year.
The Free Keys, which Mr. Rafie had joined as a bassist, left Iran to join their friends in the Yellow Dogs in 2011, the New York Times reported.
“At 318 Maujer Street, the Yellow Dogs occupied the lower apartment, and a rotating group of Iranian friends and acquaintances, including Mr. Eskandarian, lived in the upstairs apartment. The residents saw themselves as an artists’ collective, holding house parties with of-the-moment music and cheap beer for musician friends and hosting exhibitions of friends’ artwork. Mr. Sadeghpourosko’s artwork covered the walls of the living room, which the Yellow Dogs used as a practice space.”
They were a familiar sight on their quiet street, where small apartment buildings abut warehouses, often skateboarding or biking around with a dog. Neighbors noted their long hair and tight jeans, the young people of mixed ethnicities streaming into the building for parties, and the music that poured out.
Humble and eager to learn, they arrived early to gigs in their van and stayed late, mixing with fans. And though they sometimes spoke Farsi to one another and a few of their songs had politically potent lyrics, on stage they were like any indie band. “When you close your eyes, you just listen to the music, they sound very much like a regular band,” except for Mr. Karampour’s “exotic” vocals, said Jify Shah, the owner of Cameo Gallery, where the band often played.
At first, it seemed that the Free Keys would slip into Brooklyn’s music scene as easily as the Yellow Dogs had; they shared a rehearsal space and a manager, Ali Salehezadeh, who hoped the Free Keys’ story of music under political duress would resonate as the Yellow Dogs’ had. But it soon became clear that the band needed work, a friend of the band said, and that the Free Keys liked to party hard. They lacked the Yellow Dogs’ entrepreneurial spirit and ambition, the friend said.
Those in the know believed the Yellow Dogs were ascendant, ready for a national tour or even a record deal. “Everyone knows it’s only a matter of time and the Yellow Dogs are going to be huge,” said Ishmael Osekre, a Ghanaian musician who had booked the band for several shows. “That is why my heart is so broken — the idea that you left friends and family and love, and then for it to end in the way that it has, is just so unfair.”
Yellow Dogs, Iranian Band, Earned Fans Through Intensity and Promise
By The New York Times
For most aspiring young rock stars, the night two years ago when a music critic walked into a music club in Brooklyn and laid eyes and ears on the intense, dark-haired foursome on the stage might have been their first significant break.
The critic, J. Edward Keyes, said the band he first encountered at Glasslands Gallery that evening, the Yellow Dogs, immediately caught his fancy because “they projected such incredible intensity.” Right away, he said, he knew that they should be the next new band featured by eMusic, the Manhattan company where Mr. Keyes is editor in chief.
But even though the Yellow Dogs — a self-described “post-punk/dance punk” band — had not signed a contract with a record company, they were far from undiscovered. They carried a rare and intriguing label: rock band from Iran. And they had already appeared in an award-winning film and been profiled by CNN and Rolling Stone.
So there was outsize reaction on Monday when word spread that two members of the band were among three Iranian musicians shot to death in a townhouse in East Williamsburg before dawn. The killer was another musician who had come to New York from Iran more recently, the police said.
The early morning rampage shattered the image of the group as easygoing expatriates who supported one another’s dreams of becoming rock stars. It also left the band without one of its founding members, Soroush Farazmand, 27, a guitarist who was known as Looloosh.
Mr. Farazmand and his brother Arash, a 28-year-old drummer, were among four people shot in the house, which was the band’s home base. Two other members of the band, the bassist Koory Mirz and Siavash Karampour, a singer known as Obash, were not there when the shooting started.
The trio of Koory, Looloosh and Obash was “really the core of the band,” Mr. Keyes said. “They were always adding and dropping a fourth member.”
The core, though, had held together since their days dodging the police in Tehran, where merely inciting young people to dance could have landed them in jail. Their travails were portrayed in “No One Knows About Persian Cats,” a 2009 film by the Iranian director Bahman Ghobadi.
After the film won a special jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was screened at festivals around the world, the musicians became objects of global fascination.
“The government suddenly got very interested,” Mr. Karampour said in an interview with Rolling Stone in 2011. “They made a TV series about musicians and said all these people are Satanists and we have to execute all of them and they don’t believe in God. So after we saw that stuff and after the film we thought, man, we have to get out of the country.”
The bandmates sought visas in late 2009 to go on tour in the United States. According to notes from a State Department cable that was released by WikiLeaks, they told the consul staff in Istanbul about their encounters with Iranian officials.
They recounted several occasions when the police raided their closed-door concerts in soundproofed basements or isolated warehouses. “One raid led to the detention of one band member under official charges of ‘Satan worship,’ ” the cable said. It took a combination of bribes and parental pleading to get him released after two weeks, it said.
Even after settling in Brooklyn, the band avoided being as political as some Iranian-Americans wanted, said Mr. Karampour.
“We try not to say Iran, Iran, Iran; because the essence of the band is not only that we’re from Iran,” he told Rolling Stone. He added that their songs were “surrealistic, symbolic” stories. “You can relate them to Iran or to America, whatever. We don’t want to be a political band only.”
Neighbors and other people who had encountered the bandmates in New York described them as friendly, fun-loving young men who could often be seen riding skateboards to and from the townhouse.
Rahill Jamalifard, a member of another Iranian band, Habibi, said the shootings shook the community. “It’s devastating because you see these kids — they were initially in this movie that Iranians are really proud of. And it’s like, ‘Oh look, we have an indie rock scene. I recognized them. I heard of them.’ ”
Yellow Dogs – Awards and nominations. Its first official screening was at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Special Jury Prize Ex-aequo in the Un Certain Regard section.
The film follows two young musicians (Ashkan and Negar) as they form a band and prepare to leave Iran shortly after being released from prison. The pair befriends a man named Nader (Hamed Behdad), an underground music enthusiast and producer who helps them travel around Tehran and its surrounding areas in order to meet other underground musicians possibly interested in forming a band and later leaving the country.
Last week’s print issue of The Village Voice featured an incredibly thoughtful and well researched article on the whirling dervish known as Karen O, in advance of her band the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ gig at the Barclays Center tonight. In it, Karen talked about her love of New York, what playing a hometown show like this means to her and about the future of the band, after the release of their latest album Mosquito. Because of space limitations, the newspaper weren’t able to include everything. Here is the rest of what Karen O had to say.
“New Jersey is so boring,” says the blonde whirlwind known as Karen O, hanging out at home in Manhattan. She’s reflecting on why she moved from the Garden State, where she grew up, to New York City a little over a decade ago. “To have something so close that you can touch it, something that’s sort of the epicenter of culture, excitement, and hedonism on your doorstep, it creates a tension and ambition,” she continues. “Maybe if I grew up somewhere else, I wouldn’t have had the tension of wanting to communicate or connect with something bigger than myself. It made living in Jersey all the more painful,” she laughs.
That tension has driven Karen O to push the boundaries of, as she says, excitement and hedonism, onstage with her Yeah Yeah Yeahs bandmates, drummer Brian Chase and guitarist Nick Zinner. Since forming in 2000, they’ve made case after case for being crowned New York’s Band. Even though they slugged out their early years playing their jagged anti-punk at long-gone venues like Sin-É, CBGB (“we played after a hair-metal band”), and even a junkyard Karen barely remembers, they’ve always mixed it up. They’d play Radio City as well as intimate venues like Union Pool as they ascended the charts, reaching No. 5 with their latest album, April’s dubby, dance-rock stinger Mosquito.
Through it all, even when Karen O moved to L.A. for a bit and then back to Jersey, the group has always showcased its relationship with New York, recording a live film for their 2007 EP Is Is at the Williamsburg outpost Glasslands and shooting the video for Mosquito‘s “Despair” atop the Empire State Building. Now they’re putting on what Karen O is promising to be one of their biggest shows ever, at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on September 19.
“We’re going to try to do some showstoppin’ stuff,” she says. “Maybe we’ll have some special guests and some crowd-pleasing moments where everything turns into confetti. It’s going to feel like a really wild party.” She laughs, then adds, “We have all of the resources that we can’t bring with us on the road here in New York. We’re going to pull out the stops.”
Those are strong words coming from a woman who routinely prowls the stage in her colorful Christian Joy–designed couture before she giddily explodes, pounding her fist to her chest, leaping across expansive stages, and generally indulging her every Dionysian whim. It’s a stark contrast to her casual offstage mien, where she stammers a little, searching for the right words when speaking, and laughs whimsically. “I’m probably one of the least recognized pseudo-rock stars out there,” she says with another laugh. “Even five minutes after I get offstage, people don’t recognize me.”
It’s in performing, she says, when she truly feels free. And that uninhibited nature is what makes her a great frontwoman. “There’s the Michael Jackson level of being a frontperson, which is the major level, and then, for me, there’s also the Lux Interior, Jon Spencer, David Bowie, and Darby Crash level,” she explains. “I feel that there should be a sexual energy in there. Those people that I just named were probably pretty repressed, shy, tortured individuals, but their performances exploded with a certain kind of sexual tension. When I go to a rock show, I want to have a crush on the frontperson and a desire to want to be the object of their desire in the audience.
“The other thing is vulnerability,” she continues. “I feel like, for me as a frontperson, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in since the very beginning is to be as vulnerable and raw up there as possible, and as goofy and dorky. I remember after we did a show with the Breeders in L.A. [in 2009], and Kim [Deal] came up to me afterward and said, ‘You’re the biggest dork I’ve ever seen onstage.'” She laughs. “And the thing is, it’s disarming. My whole process is to lose myself up there.”
That performance process sounds like one she took while making Mosquito. Songs like the single “Sacrilege” seem to jump out of the speakers, thanks to her whispered verses and yelped interjections, and the shimmering, lightly textured “Despair” gives the singer enough room to lose herself in ruminating on how “Despair/you’ve always been there/through my wasted years.” One of the most poignant cuts, though, is the group’s bittersweet love letter to the five boroughs, “Subway.”
“My husband sent me a list of the 100 best New York songs,” she says. “He was like, ‘Maybe you guys should write a New York song.’ I was like, ‘We’ve written one!'” she laughs, recalling “Yeah! New York,” the B-side to their 2003 single “Date with the Night.” “Then ‘Subway’ is kind of what came out of it. I think being on the subway is one of the most unique and original New York City experiences you can have.”
With the release of Mosquito, the group has found itself in an unexpected position. Ever since the release of their debut full-length, Yeah Yeah Yeahs have recorded for the major label Interscope, but now they’ve fulfilled their contract and are weighing their options. “It’s a brand-new era for us,” she says. “We’ll have more freedom than we’ve ever had before to see what’s out there and how that works for us.”
In the meantime, she says the band is focusing on its remaining tour dates for the year, including the Barclays show, which features the group’s longtime friend, indie-rock’s analog to the Naked Cowboy, the briefs-wearing, hard-partying r&b belter Har Mar Superstar, as its opener. “I love the record he just released, Bye Bye 17, because it’s like young Stevie Wonder,” Karen O says, explaining why the group drafted the Brooklyn-via-Minnesota extrovert for the show. “He’s a feel-good kind of guy. He’s a close friend, but we figured that he’s just really good at getting the audience pumped and ready to dance and ready to party. He primes the audience with his feel-good vibes, doing his shoulder stands and cracking jokes. And he’s got a fucking showstopping voice.”
When she pauses and reflects on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ trajectory, which included Har Mar opening for them in 2003, she’s still a little amazed at how it’s brought her to where she is. “When we started out, playing in a really shitty bar in New York City was a huge deal,” she says. “Before we started touring, I didn’t have much to go on, outside of that. So playing the Barclays Center, that’s probably the pinnacle, right? I have a good feeling about it. I don’t know why, but I never wanted to play Madison Square Garden or anything like that. But somehow Barclays seemed like the right fit.”
But part of being the right fit, at least for a New York band, also means ease of accessibility. So how will Karen get from Manhattan to Brooklyn for the gig? “I’m totally going to take the subway there,” she says with a laugh. “Without a doubt.”
Why did you decide to do a show at the Barclays Center?
For us, the alternative was maybe a couple of Terminal 5 shows. That just wasn’t cutting the mustard. [Laughs] At the end of the It’s Blitz tour, our big New York show was a Radio City show and that was just magnificent. It was such a memorable, unique and wonderful experience for us. So for this, we kind of thought, Let’s go for the guts and the glory of doing a really big–staggeringly big–knock-your-socks-off show. But instead of doing the Terminal 5 thing, which we’ve never actually done–I went to go see LCD Soundsystem when they did, like, five of them in a row there and it was great–this just kind of feels more epic and is something I had a pretty good feeling about, too.
The Barclays Center is near what used to be a divey venue called Southpaw, where a lot of bands got their start. What were some of the grungiest New York venues you played early on?
Our second or third show was at CBGBs when it was, I guess, winding down. [Laughs] I think we played after a hair-metal band. It was probably, like, a Tuesday evening or something. [Laughs] That was definitely one of the nastiest, grungiest places we’ve played, especially towards the end. And there was the Cooler, which was like a meat locker in the meat-packing district. That was a pretty stuffy, grimy basement type venue. And we did a junkyard with the Twisted Ones, who were these indie promoters that did a lot of cool shows when everything was exploding in 2002 and 2003. We did a show in a junkyard in Brooklyn. The city has a lot of places that you can play. [Laughs]
Was a big venue like the Barclays Center always your goal?
I don’t think that was ever on my radar. Back then, playing a show in a New York City club was such a big deal for me. Just that alone was a lot of pressure. It was a huge deal to be at a really shitty bar. I didn’t have much to go about outside of that, and even doing any shows outside of New York City was kind of unfathomable to me, so playing the Barclays Center, that’s the probably the pinnacle, right? As far as playing in New York City venues. It’s pretty exciting. When it came up as an option, the intuitive artist side of me had a good feeling about it.
What role did New York play in the intuitive artist side of you?
I feel like I blossomed as an individual and came into my own because I moved here. I transferred to NYU Film when I was 18 or 19. I still hadn’t really come into my own and gotten a sense of myself and my individuality and the Karen O aspect of that, too, at that point. The exhibitionist and performer part of my personality didn’t happen until I moved to New York City in my late teens or early 20s. I associate it with caterpillar-to-butterfly transformation. This is where I guess I became the artist I am now.
You’re now a very dynamic and uninhibited frontperson live. Have you ever regretted doing anything onstage?
Yeah, there’s one major regret. Well, it’s not a regret. I had an accident where I fell off the stage head first in Sydney in 2002 or 2003. I could have broken my neck, broken my back, gotten my head bashed in. I was hanging off a monitor on the edge of the stage and I slipped off of it and went head first down to the floor, five or six feet, and the monitor–I don’t know how much that weighs, probably over a hundred pounds or something–it came and just bonked me on the head. And that was a big sign to me at that point in time.
I was drinking so much before I went onstage and the violence and the recklessness that was happening up there, it was like Iggy. I don’t know if he ever hurt himself that badly up there, but it was not for a 23-year-old girl. So it’s escalating. I was hurting myself more and more and more, like with black eyes, chipped teeth, bruises all over my body. And then that happened and I slipped off the stage and I had to go to the emergency room. It was a pretty major, traumatic event of my life. I had to kind of rearrange the whole way I thought about things.
It kind of made me think of The Wrestler, like that weird thing about human nature where the more that he got hurt and the more that he hurt other people, the more people seemed to love him. [Laughs]. So that accident tore me out of that cycle of things.
I think at that point in time, I was totally just a spectacle for a lot of people. And what I did up there was really self-destructive. And I think people were really getting off on it in a really weird way. I felt like I was feeding into that and feeding off of it, and then that happened and I had to change the whole way I thought about performing. [Laughs] That’s probably one of the only things where I just felt, like, Holy shit! But it’s not a regret because I learned so much from it.
Well, despite that, you’ve maintained an anything-can-happen air about you. What should we expect from the Barclays show?
We’re going to pull out all the stops. It’s going to be really fun and dynamic. It’s going to be a celebration. It will be great.
So you’re saying it’s going to be the show?
It will be the show.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs perform at Barclays Center on September 19 with Har Mar Superstar
UNRULY HEARTS 