Will I love Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys.?

Viv Albertine’s memoir is raw and completely unfiltered, just like punk itself. I was hooked from the first page because it lives and breathes punk while also documenting its history.

Having photographed the New York and Boston punk scene firsthand, I connected deeply with her storytelling. It reminded me of the energy I felt photographing the bands back in the late 1970s.

Few musicians are able to pen their own memoir, sans ghostwriter, without toppling into weary self-indulgence. Take a bow, Viv Albertine. Named after a scathing condemnation of her teenage proclivities by her despairing mother, Clothes Clothes Clothes… brilliantly chronicled the groundbreaking all-female UK punk band The Slits’ guitarist’s brittle, self-doubting journey through music and life. Highlights? Joe Strummer’s unstinting attempts to pick her up whenever her boyfriend Mick Jones’s back was turned, and Johnny Rotten’s characteristically sneering dismissal of her failed attempt to give him a blow-job: "Oh, Vivienne, you’re trying too hard!"

I absolutely loved this book so much that I read it three times.

I think that Viv Albertine is one of the most influential women in music. She deserves so much more credit than she has ever gotten.

Viv Albertine’s describes her time as lead guitarist playing with the all-female band The Slits from the UK. We follow young Viv as she rejects the repressive notions of the time of what it meant to be a female.

The Slits were an integral part of the 1970s punk scene in the UK alongside bands like The Clash and The Sex Pistols.… show more.