This is a fun song and video with a sad backstory. I’d never heard of the Yellow Dogs until two days ago. They were Iranian friends who loved playing rock music in Teheran, where the music is banned. You may know that there are two very different Irans, one that shares many Western values and culture and prides itself on its modernity, and the other Islamist Iran which controls the government and political institutions. The Yellow Dogs, like the heroine of Persepolis, loved rock music and risked jail because of that love. They also had parents wealthy enough to help them get out of the country and set them up in the US, in my home town of Brooklyn, in political asylum.

And they were doing okay until two days ago, when another Iranian musician, a former member of another Iranian band called the Free Keys, broke into the house the Yellow Dogs lived in and shot it up, killing three (including two of the Yellow Dogs) and wounding another before shooting himself. Apparently the shooter had been kicked out of the Free Keys because he’d stolen some money or sold some equipment that wasn’t his, and his subsequent efforts to redeem himself and get back in the band were rebuffed. An awful story. He apparently carried the gun he used in a guitar case.

There are a few Yellow Dog songs on YouTube, and profiles of the band done by eMusic and Converse sneakers. They were doing okay, and this song shows why.