Iranian musicians upset by president's music purge

If anyone needs a television camera following them around it's Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. This guy's a comedic goldmine.

Iranian musicians reacted with a mixture of anger and dismay on Wednesday to a directive from a body headed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seeking to scrap Western music from the state media's playlists.
Iranians might not be humming along to versions of Abba and the Eagles for much longer, if a recommendation issued on Sunday is embraced by the state television and radio networks.

They listen to The Eagles in Iran? So they hate us, but love our music. Does that mean it's possible to be beheaded with the song 'Hotel California' playing in the background. That's just too much for me.

Iranian musicians saw the directive as a step back to the ideals of the 1979 revolution, so close to Ahmadinejad's heart.

I was born in 1979. Oops...I bet I'm on some sort of watch list now.

One senior Iranian cleric, Ayatollah Mohammadali Movahedi Kermani, said the "traditional" Persian music he saw on a state television programme failed to reach the standards demanded by religious law. "Have we been created by Allah to have fun? They are wasting people's time with leisure and idle pastimes."

Have we been created to have fun? I'd like to think so. If we weren't supposed to have fun, why's it feel so right. Come on Kermani, get up and dance. Shake that booty!

Iran has an extensive black market in which young people can find most of the latest Western hits at very cheap prices. Many download music off the Internet.

Hope is alive and well in Iran's young. How can you hate the country that gave you the IPod, the internet porn or the large holes we've left in the Continent of Asia. Let's all celebrate our love of music by stopping nuclear ambitions. You first Iran.