Most little-known bands that play the South By Southwest Music and Media Conference in Austin, Texas, dream of fat record contracts and million-selling albums. But the Iranian group 127 would settle for getting government permission to put out a CD.

“It’s not a wonderful feeling,” says 127 singer Sohrab Mohebbi, 24. “It’s been a struggle. I don’t know how much longer we can take this.”

On Saturday, the Tehran sextet will become the first Iranian rock band to perform in the United States, South By Southwest officials say. A milestone, considering President Bush calls Iran part of “the Axis of Evil” while Iranian officials denounce the U.S. as “the Great Satan.”

While Mohebbi hopes the South By Southwest gig will boost 127’s career, he also sees the trip as a way to show Americans that Iranians don’t hate them. On the flip side, he hopes Americans will learn to trust people from the Middle East — a topic he deals with in “My Sweet Little Terrorist Song.”

“I’m a terrorist, although I haven’t killed anyone,” he sings in English, sounding like Bob Dylan. “I’m a suicidal bomb — be careful, I might go off at the end of this song.”

“I wrote the song because I see things on the BBC and CNN, and the Western point of view is that we’re all terrorists,” Mohebbi says by phone from the United Arab Emirates, where he was waiting for a visa to fly to Austin.

“It’s the government that causes all those problems. People don’t have problems with each other.”

The language of rock

Western music was outlawed in Iran after the revolution of 1979, when Islamic cleric Ayatollah Khomeini took power and ousted the Shah of Iran. Khomeini died in 1989 — shortly after demanding the death of “The Satanic Verses” author Salman Rushdie — and musical restrictions were eased in 1997 under reformist president Mohammed Khatami.

Iranian rock band 127 lounges by the greenhouse in a Tehran suburb where they practice. The ensemble is the first rock act from Iran to perform in the United States when the group appears this weekend at SXSW.

But today, rock ‘n’ roll is still largely unheard in Iran. Radio doesn’t play it, and rock shows are all but nonexistent.

“It’s a marketing problem,” Tehran record store owner Babak Chamanara told the BBC recently. “The problem is that nontraditional and non-pop music sounds a bit strange to music industry people. They see that this genre does not sell, therefore they do not invest in it.”

The one Western genre that does sell is Iranian-American pop, recorded by Iranian musicians who fled to Los Angeles during Ayatollah Khomeini’s reign.

But Mohebbi refuses to “imitate those cheesy pop records from Los Angeles, which is what you have to do to make it in Iran. To be in a rock band, you have to go really, deeply underground. And that is what we’re willing to do.”

He caught the rock bug from his father, a Tehran businessman, and his mother, a writer. Both were big fans of Dire Straits and Pink Floyd and cobbled together a rock record collection for their son to listen to.

“There are no official record stores that sell foreign CDs in Iran, so we have to get them somehow from people who fly outside and have come back,” the singer says. “Once, we had to wait six months to get ‘Dark Side of the Moon.'”

127’s official Web site

He formed 127 four years ago with fellow university students Sardar Sarmast (piano), Slamak Khaledi (trombone), Alireza Pourassad (bass), Yayha Alkhansa (drums) and Shervin Shahamipour (setar). The band’s name doesn’t mean anything, he says, and that’s the point: He didn’t want it to sound explicitly Iranian or American.

Likewise, 127’s music blends Iranian styles with rock and jazz. By American standards, its music is still fairly crude. But Mohebbi has no illusions of being rock’s next big thing. He just wants to make rock a lifelong career, hence his decision to sing in English.

“German and French bands sing in English, too … It’s the language of rock.”

But in Iran, freedom of speech isn’t in the rock lexicon. 127 recently recorded its debut album and submitted it for government approval, but it doesn’t know yet if officials will allow the CD.

The singer is optimistic, especially since his lyrics don’t criticize Iran — at least not overtly. “New Sky” could be interpreted as a call for political change, but Mohebbi clams up when you ask him about it.

127, a five-piece band from Tehran, is the first Iranian rock act to tour the America. The group will play Saturday at South By Southwest.

“I’m not going to say,” he says, laughing. “I can’t be too straightforward. You have to choose just the right words.”

Jealousy and optimism

Mohebbi isn’t the only one worried about offending officials. Organizers of the music festival declined to speak about 127, fearing the publicity might complicate their travel visas, says festival spokeswoman Elizabeth Derczo.

“Other rock bands in Iran are jealous we’re going, but they’re also very optimistic everything will go smooth for us so other bands will be able to travel more and play,” says Mohebbi, who found out about the festival online.

Like most fledgling bands playing the music festival for the first time, 127 hopes the exposure will help them land gigs around the United States and Europe. The group has played just four concerts in four years — all at Tehran Art University, where Mohebbi studies photography.

“It’s the only place we can play because we can’t get permission from the authorities to play anywhere else. It’s hard, because we don’t have radio stations or clubs where you can hear about rock bands. Our only club is our Web site,” he says, referring to www.comingaroundmusic.com.

And slowly, thanks to the Internet, their audience seems to be growing.

“I was in this coffee shop in Tehran and I started hearing this music that sounded familiar and then I realized it was 127’s music which people had downloaded off the Net,” he says.

“That was very cool, to know that somehow, rock music will find its way to the people.”