WIYE Presents : Life-Changing British Pop and a Voyage Through Darkest Metal

On March 9, we’re delighted to be joined by the writer and broadcaster Pete Paphides talking about Broken Greek, which is nailed-on to be one of the year’s big music book success stories.

Pete’s parents moved from Cyprus to Birmingham and opened a fish and chip shop and his immensely funny, clever and original coming-of-age memoir explores the guilty secret that he was living in a Greek household but everything that excited him was British. His main obsession was pop music and this captures the magnetic thrill of how it affected him when he first heard it – ABBA, the Rubettes, the Wombles and Showaddywaddy when he was five; punk rock, the Police and the Jam when he was eight; and the golden age of the early ’80s hits when he was 13. It’s a touching account of the trials of growing up – “Do you sometimes feel like the music you’re hearing is explaining your life to you?”

Pete started at Melody Maker and moved to the Times, the Guardian, Q and MOJO etc, and appears on Radio 4 and Soho Radio, and this will be a story-filled and highly entertaining encounter.

And we have the music writer Dan Franklin on Heavy: How Metal Changes The Way We See The World. Dan got a Guns N’Roses album on his eighth birthday and has been investigating ‘the heavy’ ever since, as fascinated by Black Sabbath and Nirvana as he is by Carcass and Cradle of Filth.

He’ll be taking a scenic route that involves Tarantino, Mad Max 2, gothic literature, medieval history, Aldous Huxley and the Vietnam War to put metal in its rightful place “at the heart of the cultural landscape”. Never has its dark satanic art been more elegantly examined.

Two terrific speakers and a splendid time guaranteed for all.