Punk/post-punk icon John Lydon turns 55 today, and to commemorate, rather than choose between the equally groundbreaking Sex Pistols and Public Image Ltd., here’s something equally important: Lydon’s collaboration with Afrika Bambaataa on Time Zone’s 1984 single ‘World Destruction.’

Although John Lydon has delayed work on a new Public Image Ltd. album over the death of stepdaughter Ari Up, the reunited band will continue performing in 2011, with two new summer festival dates announced this week in the U.K. and Slovakia.

German-born punk pioneer Ari Up — the frontwoman of The Slits who learned guitar from Joe Strummer and was John Lydon’s stepdaughter — died today at age 48 following ‘a serious illness,’ Lydon and her mother, Nora Foster, announced via Public Image Ltd.’s website.

Twenty-two years ago, Robert Smith sat for a half-hour BBC2 documentary about The Cure that aired Aug. 8, 1988, as one of 10 installments of the series ‘That Was Then… This Is Now.’

The reconstituted Public Image Ltd. today canceled the entire mid-August German leg of its ongoing reunion tour over ‘production scheduling problems,’ and said it has no plans to rebook the six scrapped concerts.

The reformatted Public Image Ltd. announced today that it will return to the U.K. this summer with a six-date run of shows in July that follows John Lydon and Co.’s initial comeback tour of the band’s homeland last December and a just-completed North American trek.