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.

Watch the Waterboys performing their 1988 classic ‘Fisherman’s Blues’ live in Irish radio station RTÉ 2fm’s mobile studio at the Electric Picnic Music & Arts Festival last weekend, where Mike Scott & Co. shared the bill with Roxy Music, Bad Lieutenant and Public Image Ltd., among other bands.

Short-lived British postpunk act The Pop Group — which somehow melded punk, dub, noise and funk — will reunite this September after nearly 30 years apart, with four concerts scheduled in the U.K. and Italy and a new album reportedly in the works.

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.

R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey joined Pearl Jam in Berlin last night to rip through the MC5’s classic ‘Kick Out the Jams’ at a concert that also featured the Seattle rockers debuting a new cover of Public Image Ltd.’s ‘Public Image.’

Tonight’s ‘Dark Wave’ on Sirius XM’s 1st Wave opened with The Cure’s ‘Disintegration,’ and featured such highlights as a rare airing of TSOL (‘Flowers By the Door’); the return of Public Image Ltd.’s ‘Rise,’ which opened the show for weeks on end earlier this year; and both Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ and the Swans’ cover.

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.