Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys.: A Memoir

Description

“Ms. Albertine’s book is wiry and cogent and fearless.… Her book has an honest, lo-fi grace. If it were better written, it would be worse.”―Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“Disregard Katniss And Tris – Viv Albertine Is Your New Hero.”―MTV.com

The Rough Trade #1 Book of the Year!

Viv Albertine is a pioneer. As lead guitarist and songwriter for the seminal band The Slits, she influenced a future generation of artists including Kurt Cobain and Carrie Brownstein. She formed a band with Sid Vicious and Used to be there the night he met Nancy Spungeon. She tempted Johnny Thunders…toured The united states with the Clash…dated Mick Jones…and inspired the classic Clash anthem “Train in Vain.” But Albertine Used to be no mere muse. In Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys., Albertine delivers a unique and unfiltered look at a traditionally male-dominated scene.

Her story is so a lot more than a music memoir. Albertine’s narrative is nothing less than a fierce correspondence from a life on the fringes of culture. The creator recalls rebelling from conformity and patriarchal society ever since her days as an adolescent girl in the same London suburb of Muswell Hill where the Kinks formed. With brash honesty―and an unforgiving memory―Albertine writes of immersing herself into punk culture a few of the likes of the Sex Pistols and the Buzzcocks. Of her devastation when the Slits broke up and her reinvention as a director and screenwriter. Or abortion, marriage, motherhood, and surviving cancer. Navigating infidelity and negotiating divorce. And launching her recent comeback as a solo artist with her debut album, The Vermilion Border.

Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. is a raw chronicle of music, fashion, love, sex, feminism, and more that connects the early days of punk to the Riot Grrl movement and beyond. But even more profoundly, Viv Albertine’s remarkable memoir is the story of an empowered woman staying true to herself and making it on her own in the modern world.

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, December 2014: Viv Albertine’s memoir is a book is divided almost straight down the middle. Side One is the story of her upbringing in the north London suburb of Muswell Hill: It’s the mid-seventies, and the Sex Pistols are at the head of a massive, angry (or at least frustrated) cultural insurgence. Her rebellious tendencies have led her into the center of punk culture, and inspired by its outsized personalities and confrontational style, she picks up a guitar, forsaking traditional training for the DIY ethos of the day. After her band with the pre-Pistols Sid Vicious (The Flowers of Romance–a possibly sardonic suggestion from Johnny Rotten) fails to launch, Albertine joins forces with The Slits, a ska-infused, all-girl outfit that, through the force of its collective will and audacity, elbows its way to the front of a stage filled with sharp, mostly male elbows. Everyone is wearing Vivenne Westwood’s provocative clothing purchased from Malcolm McLaren’s infamous boutique, SEX–at least as much as they could find the money for. Mick Jones of The Clash wanders in and out of the story, first as a gangly proto-punk spending all of his time and loose change trying to put together a band, and later as Albertine’s on-again, off-again boyfriend (the classic London Calling track “Train in Vain” Used to be inspired by her). It’s a story in the best rock & roll tradition: Initiative leads. Ability chases. Success looms. Then someone bumps the turntable.

Side Two. The band has blown apart. Grownup problems ensue: education and career; marriage and kids; serious illness, divorce, and identity. The actor Vincent Gallo. Albertine moves through all of it, drawing from the same well of determination that compelled her to pick up the guitar for the first time. The two sides of the book may tell very different stories, but they share perspective and style that are both straightforward and in the long run uncompromising. If you love this music (and your library contains titles like Please Kill Me and Richard Hell’s I Dreamed I Used to be a Very Clean Tramp), then this book is fascinating and essential. If not, it’s fascinating and inspiring. It’s infrequently coarse, and steadily terribly funny and fun.– Jon Foro