Typical Girls?

Zoe Street Howe is a freelance writer and broadcaster contributing to publications including NME, Channel 4 music, Contemporary Magazine and BBC Music. She has previously assisted with press matters for artists such as The Blockheads, The Tiger Lillies and X Ray Spex. She also presents and co-produces the alternative music radio show Paranoimia, which broadcasts across Europe. Zoe lives in London, with her husband, jazz drummer Dylan Howe.

Wild, defiant and startlingly inventive, The Slits were ahead of their time. Although they created some unique hybrids - dub reggae and pop-punk, African rhythms, funk and free jazz - they were dismissed as being unable to play. Their lyrics were witty and perceptive while their influential first album challenged perceptions of punk and of girl bands - but they were still misunderstood. And that infamous debut album cover, with the band appearing topless and mud-daubed, prompted further misreadings of the first ladies of punk.Author Zoe 'Street' Howe speaks to The Slits themselves, to former manager Don Letts, mentor and PIL guitarist Keith Levene and many other friends and colleagues to discover exactly how The Slits phenomenon came about and to celebrate the legacy of a seminal band long overdue its rightful acclaim.Too long seen as a note in the margin of the history of rock, The Slits at last get a fair hearing in this revealing biography.