Introduction by Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2015 Images from the Internet
This interview was originally published in FFanzeen, issue #7, dated 1981. It was written by the Managing Editor of the
magazine, Julia Masi. Part of what the Shirts so special was that they were fun. It looked like
they enjoyed being on stage, and that transmitted to the audience. I only saw
the Annie Golden version play once, and then saw the post-Annie band play at a
reunion concert for the late Brooklyn club Zappaz, which was held at the
now-also-gone L’Amours in the mid-2000s. As for Golden, I saw her perform at
the Bottom Line in a nascent version of the play based on Ellie Greenwich’s
music, Leader of the
Pack (the Broadway version was not as
personal, nor as fun). When the band
reformed after Golden left, it took two singers to replace her. That tells you
something. Of course, Golden went from the Shirts, to the film Hair, to a recurring role in Cheers, to where she is now, a regular on the
extremely popular Netflix series Orange is the New Black, where she ironically plays someone who is
mostly mute. – RBF, 2015
“Guilt through association,” states
Artie Lamonica as re reflects on why the Shirts are so often mislabelled. “We
were considered a New Wave band, but we weren’t really. It’s just a tag. We
didn’t form because New Wave was happening. We were around before the New Wave
and we’ll be around afterwards.”
In their nine-year history, the
Shirts – Artie Lamonica, guitar / keyboards; Ron Ardito, guitar; John Piccolo,
keyboards; Johnny Zeek Criscione, drums; Bob Racippo, bass; and Annie Golden,
vocals – have gone through a metamorphosis from being “the worst cover band in
the world” to one of the more popular bands in Europe. The band began when they
were teenagers in Brooklyn. They played block parties and local bars until they
started writing their own material. By the mid-‘70s, they were headlining
regularly at CBGBs and under contract to Capitol and EMI/Harvest Records. With
three albums to their credit (The Shirts;
Street Light Shine; and Inner Sleeve),
a few cuts on the Live at CBGBs
album, and legions of fans who wait in line for hours to get tickets to their
shows in Holland and Germany, the Shirts still haven’t gotten the recognition
they deserve back in the States, considering they are one of the top ten bands
on the college concert circuit.
The way they see it, the problem lies
in the fact that they are difficult to categorize. All six members of the band
have a hand in writing the songs, and their different tastes and personalities are
reflected in their work. In the past, they have shown their cynicism (“Laugh
and Walk Away,” “Too Much Trouble”), dabbled in science fiction (“Triangulum”),
and expressed disappointment (“Small Talk”) and love (“As Long as the Laughter
Lasts”). Their music ranges from danceable high-energy rock’n’roll to ballads.
“We never felt that we had certain
sound,” Artie continues, “like band that have a whole album based on a sound.
We always felt that we liked to do different things. We try to let everybody be
artistically free, as much as possible. We don’t shun a song because it doesn’t
have the Shirts’ sound. We try not to. We listen to each other. We listen to
the radio, what’s on the air. We try to be as modern as possible. We started
out trying to do things differently to create different types of chords and
just play them. Now we’ve learned how to arrange; how to simplify our music. We
created a base and now we can build. We could be just as popular in America.”
“It’s strange in Europe,” explains
Annie, “because it just seemed to snowball by itself. The very first album we
did had a hit single on the charts in Holland [“Tell Me Your Plans” – JM, 1981]. Our European record company sent
us there to do some kind of public interest stuff and they liked what they saw.
They took us to their hearts and we had mild success consistently since that
first song. And we understand that the Inner
Sleeve album is Number One on the Austrian charts. We’ve never been to
Austria. It’s very close in Europe, very concentrated. The people are very
cultured because the people are so crammed together. Things can catch on a lot
better than they can here.
“I’ve progressed as the chatterbox.
In our personal life, I’m the chatterbox, but in the stage show, I never used
to talk to the audience. We always let our music speak for itself. Now, I feel
more comfortable talking to people. I feel like they want to hear what I have
to say. I never really go blank. I usually talk about the club, or the next
song, or the Shirts.
“When we go to Europe, we’re not
stifled. We just talk less, and we just let the music speak for itself. So, we
don’t really feel uncomfortable that way. It’s funny: you’ll say something,
like if you’re in Holland, ‘You might remember this song from a couple of years
ago,’ and they don’t respond, or some of them might. But once you sing that
first line, then the excitement stirs, and they go crazy.
“Sometimes it’s hard when people are
shouting things at you from the front. You can tell when it’s kind. You can
tell by the delivery. And most often it is; you get so frustrated and you wish
you could understand them” On the whole, Annie finds European audiences
“Anxious and eager; pretty polite. They listen. They don’t stir around or mix
it up. They pay attention to you, which is pretty strange. All eyes are on you.
We’re not used to that.”
But they should be. When the Shirts
take to the stage, their visual presence is almost as strong as their music.
Petite, blonde Annie flutters around the stage like a trained modern dancer as
she sings and vamps with the boys. The rest of the band plays off each other
and sometimes with the audience. They’ve been known to offer their instruments
to fans and invite them to play along. “But it’s not contrived,” says Annie,
who explains that her stage moves aren’t choreographed; they’re just a natural
reaction to the music. She describes them as callisthenic, and admits that
aside from her training with Twyla Tharp for the movie Hair [1979], she has never formally studied dance.
She eschews the preening role of the
prima donna that so many female singers are obsessed with. “I hate that ‘Oh, is
my make-up on right? Is my hair fixed?’” Although her stage personality is very
feminine, she looks upon herself as a mixture of “woman, groupie, and one of
the boys.”
The latter day The Shirts
As entertaining as their live shows
may be, the band hasn’t relied on their stage presence to get by on film. For
their most popular video, “Laugh and Walk Away,” they flew to England and
employed the talents of Brian Grant, the best television cameraman in the
country. He wrote a story that begins with Annie singing as she is wheeled into
a hospital by the band, all wearing white coasts. “We had gone to London to the
video and we were all jet-lagged, and everything. And Grant had this storyline
for us. I was standoffish, as I usually am about outsiders presenting their
ideas to the band. And when I read his outline for the song, I couldn’t believe
he had never heard us perform; yet in his outline of “Laugh and Walk Away,” he
had me playing all these different kinds of characters. Just the fact that a
lot of my physical moves have been said to be puppet-like, and he had me
playing the puppet, with strings being manipulated by business people. It’s so
funny, ‘cause I don’t drive. I’m terrified to drive. And he had this thing of
me driving, and then being terrified in the car. It was really great the way he
was naturally in tune with what we were about, never having seen us.
Realizing that it takes more than a
memorable video and a polished sound to make a hit single, the Shirts have left
Capitol, their American record company. They are hoping to have more input on
the next record they do, so that they’ll go on record sounding the same as they
do at a live gig. “Our sound man’s been with us for eight years. The ultimate
goal would be to have him engineer, or produce or something, because we always
get compliments on our live sound. When we hear cassettes of live gigs, it
always sound exactly the way we feel we sound.”
Fifty musicians and composers made up the late Paste magazine’s list of the top 100 songwriters, essentially in the past 50 years. Published in 2006, this list came to my attention only a few days ago.
This is bound to drive just about anyone else crazy, because music is subjective to the core, which they firmly state in the opening article before the list. Their criteria was that those who selected “were encouraged to vote for the songwriters they treasured the most, not the ones with the highest sales, the biggest impact on culture or even the greatest influence on other songwriters.”
For me, I don’t capishe some of their choices, such as Patti Smith being No. 95 while Tom Petty is No. 29, or Allen Toussaint at No. 68 and then putting David Bowie at No. 16. Sure, there are some they got right (remember, this is my subjective opinion), like Michael Jackson down at No. 49, and Chuck Berry way up at No. 25 (though I would have put him much higher).
What I find most significant is the lack of artists on the list, such as Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, both of whom are still very alive. The Ramones could have been added, with Tommy and Marky still standing. Yeah, their songs were simplistic, but the music they wrote and produced was exciting, and they electrified the world. What about John Lydon, who wrote some incredible lyrics?
It is leaving out Ellie Greenwich, who died after the list was formulated, that is just criminal (for just a starters, she wrote or co-wrote ”Leader of the Pack,” "(Today I Met) The Boy I'm Gonna Marry,” "Why Do Lovers Break Each Others' Hearts?" "Be My Baby," "Baby, I Love You," "Then He Kissed Me," "Da Doo Ron Ron," "Not Too Young To Get Married," "Hanky Panky", "Do Wah Diddy Diddy", "Chapel of Love,” "I Wanna Love Him So Bad", “I Can Hear Music," "River Deep, Mountain High"… well, you get my drift? To me, it just shows sheer ignorance on those who chose.
Here is Paste’s top 10: 10. Prince 9. Joni Mitchell 8. Elvis Costello 7. Brian Wilson (The Beach Boys) 6. Leonard Cohen 5. Paul McCartney (The Beatles, Wings) 4. Tom Waits & Kathleen Brennan 3. Bruce Springsteen 2. Neil Young (Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) 1. Bob Dylan
With the exception of No 5 (Paul McCartney above Lennon-McCartney, who aren’t even on the list? Ha!), I don’t really have a problem with it.
But the thing is, though, that nearly all of these listed are pretty major players, despite the “favorite” label. However, there are so many other musicians who are under the radar who consistently write incredible songs. For example (in no particular order) there is Mary Gatchell, Tamara Hey, Maria McKee, Ruth Gerson, Harriet Shock (who has won awards for her tunes), Margo Hennebach, Adrienne Jones, Anne Lorre, Carrie Catherine, Kim Delmhorst… Oh, there are so many others.
My guess is that Paste’s selectors of the list have never heard of many – if any – of these powerful songwriters, because of their lack of numerous chart hits. You may have noticed that all the ones I have selected are women. Why? Because the Paste list has only 11: Patti Smith, Victoria Williams (No. 89), Julie Miller (No. 73), Dolly Parton (No. 55), Aimee Mann (No. 54), Gillian Welch (No. 48), Loretta Lynn (42), Carole King (No 31; one ahead of Leiber & Stoller), Lucinda Williams (No 22), Patty Griffin (No. 19), and Joni Mitchell (No. 9). They all deserve to be there, but that’s only 11 percent.
These kinds of lists are bad ideas. They draw in the readers, sure, and it’s those numbers that drive the magazine biz, but most of them are insufficient and have wide gaps. It’s part of the reason I usually don’t do “Best Of the Year” articles. Personally, I believe that these “greatest ever” things are made up just to get people riled and write angry letters, which can then be published to show everyone, “Look! People read us!” Guess it didn’t help Paste though, as they can no longer be listed in the 100 best existing magazines.
This tape was made somewhere in the early ‘80s, between interviewing Ronnie Spector for her Siren LP, and the Bottom Line versions (saw them both, though not the bloated Broadway version) of Ellie Greenwich’s Leader of the Pack [LoTP] show.
I haven’t described much of what is on the tape, because this music speaks for itself. As always, I have tried to find the original release of the song as it appears on the tape, and if that’s not possible, a live version. The quality of the videos varies. SIDE ONE
The Shangri-Las - Leader of the Pack As much as I adore some of the other singers on this tape, no one could match the sheer bad-girl sexiness of the Shangri-Las (from Queens, NY!). The Weiss sisters’ vocals could evoke like no one else. Covering an Ellie Greenwich tune doubles it.
The Chiffons - He’s So Fine Great Carol King and Gerry Goffin tune performed with tight harmonies. The Chiffons were from the Bronx!
Leslie Gore - It’s My Party Much better than the follow-up, “Judy’s Turn to Cry,” 16 year old teen idol Gore (nee Goldstein, from NYC and then NJ) powers through this tune that has become iconic as both a song and a commonly used turn. I had the privilege to see Leslie perform a couple of years ago (thank you Ingrid!) and she still has that killer voice. “You Don’t Own Me” and “Maybe I Know” are still my favorite Gore songs, but I didn’t own them when I made the tape.
The Angels - My Boyfriend’s Back Growing up I thought they were African-American, but found out on an “oldies” show on TV (Solid Gold?) that I was mistaken about these Jersey women.
Little Eva - The Locomotion Little Eva (Boyd), born in North Carolina and then moved to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, was famously Carol King’s babysitter, who was projected into the limelight. There are a lot of fun covers of this tune (including one by Christopher Milk which is wonderfully twisted), and some that are just awful (Kylie Minogue, for example). There is even a tribute song called “Little Eva” by the Locomotions.
Fontella Bass - Rescue Me This song always make me happy. Why Fontella didn’t go further I don’t know, as she was as good if not better singer than many during the whole Motown period. Oh, and she also co-wrote this song. It’s a knock-you-outta-your-socks R&B classic. The only decent version I could find was a live recording, which is still powerful.
Merrilee Rush - Angel in the Morning As with “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” it’s about the awkwardness of the day after, but this time it’s the woman’s choice for a one-night stand. Again, groundbreaking for the time. Merrilee’s version is the definitive one for me, though it seems more people know the bloodless Juice Newton or ABBA covers.
The Shirelles - Dedicated To the One I Love Many more people seem to be aware of the Mamas and the Papas’ version, which is sweet and all, but this is the one that I think of first.
The Dixie Cups - People Say The Dixie Cups are more known for “Chapel of Love,” but I think this song is better written, harmonized, and structured. Both were written by Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry.
Millie Small - My Boy Lollipop This exceedingly early (first?) ska hit was first noticed by me because of the strange accent that I had never heard before (“You set the world on fayah / You are my one dee-zai-yah”), but I fell in love with the song quite quickly. And once I heard the B-side of the single, “Sweet William,” that became a fave as well. The British ‘80s ska group Bad Manners did an interesting cover of it.
Mary Wells - My Guy Mary Wells (d. 1992) was the first superstar of Motown, and this Smokey Robinson (who also wrote “My Girl”) tune is a good example why.
Betty Everett - The Shoop-Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss) Like “Rescue Me,” this is a raver with great background harmonies; the changing melody lines hook the listener in. Everett (d. 2001) just grabs you with her opening exclamation, “Does he love me / I wanna know!” This song has been covered numerous times, again, without the same fire (Cher’s arguably being the most well known of them).
The Shirelles - Soldier Boy This song is probably closest to the sometimes bland balanced-harmonies singles that came after doo-wop and before the Beatles. It doesn’t really have any outstanding moments, but it’s still an enjoyable song.
Claudine Clark - Party Lights Actually, I became aware of this reggae-infused song though Walter Lure’s amusing version. But once I heard this original, well that was it for me. Yes, I can still enjoy Walter’s, but Claudine’s has a bite, and is also sadly comical as Clark complains to her mom about not being let her go to the party next door (“They’re doin’ the twist, the fish, the mash potato too / I’m here looking at you”).
The Chiffons - One Fine Day While this is an up-beat song, written by King / Goffin, it’s a bit demeaning as the protagonist is waiting for her straying boyfriend to realize she’s the one. It can be seen as sort of the female call-and-response to Lou Christie’s “Lightenin’ Strikes.” But it is so upbeat and joyous, I’m willing to look past that.
Evie Sands - Take Me For a Little While This is another song I first heard though a different artist, in this case Dave Edmunds. Evie’s is a bit more gritty, though it is similarly passive as “One Fine Day.” Sands is another artist that should have had more hits. The live video shows her sincerity (and note Darlene Love in a blonde wig doing back-up!), as she sings through her thick Brooklyn accent (and killer dimples).
The Jelly Beans - I Wanna Love Him So Bad Another wonderful Greenwich / Barry classic, song by this one-hit wonder Jersey City group.
SIDE TWO
Ellie Greenwich - You Don’t Know Before years of smoking ravaged her voice, the Brooklyn songwriter who defined the early ‘60s vocalized some of her own material, including this freakin’ gem. Man, this is a beautiful tune from beginning to end. Glad I got to tell Ellie I loved her to her face while I had the chance (d. 2009). Sorry about the Disney visuals on the video, but this was all I found.
The Shangri-Las - Remember (Walking in the Sand) A classic whiner, and the first Shangri-Las number I remember as a kid. Later on in life I would come to realize just how rightfully important the Las were (and as an influence, still are).
The Dixie Cups - Chapel of Love I have to say over the years, perhaps from the overuse of the tune, I’ve grown a tad tired of it. That being said, the Cups use some very sharp contrasting harmonies, especially later in this Greenwich / Barry song.
The Shirelles - Foolish Little Girl My favorite Shirelles song. Their call and response is still fresh.
Great Big Kiss - Shangri-Las Is there any sexier moment in the history of ‘60s rock’n’roll than the response to “Well, how does he dance?” “Close…very, very close.” From beginning to end, this song is killer. Embedding not allowed on the full version, so here the link: youtube.com/watch?v=gOdP_VvPKHU This is an excellent live cut, but the last chorus is cut out, probably by local television standards and practices.
The Shirelles - Boys Sad to say, I was aware of the Ringo version first. This is much more the speed I like, though.
The Crystals - And Then He Kissed Me This is the start of the Darlene Love section of the tape. And rightfully so. She recorded under so many different names, thanks to Phil Spector, but she is an undeniable power. I am very happy to say that I got to see her perform in both of the Leader of the Pack shows at the Bottom Line, and she was as exciting as ever.
The Ronettes - Be My Baby At the time, Ronnie Spector was someone that everyone of every background wanted to be with (and for me it was not just because she grabbed my crotch as we had our photos taken together). She has a voice that is instantly recognizable. She was robbed of her career by the same Phil Spector who diffused Love’s. The video below is the original version, and a live version follows. Digression: my friend Bernie Kugel had “Happy Brithday” sung to him by her this year.
Bob B. Sox and the Blue Jeans - Why Do Lovers Break Each Other’s Hearts Once again, Darlene Love shines on a Greenwich / Barry tune.
Darlene Love - Today I Met the Boy I’m Gonna Marry One of the few songs she sang under her own name, and one of many that were just beautiful. Another Greenwich / Barry bonanza.
The Ronettes - (The Best Part of) Breakin’ Up I don’t ever remember hearing this song on the radio, but it was on a compilation that I heard in the ‘80s and realized how much fun it was.
The Crystals - Da Do Ron Ron I repeat: Once again, Darlene Love shines on a Greenwich / Barry tune. This one has been covered a few times, most famously by Shaun Cassidy, but no one has touched this.
The Blossoms - He’s a Rebel This time Darlene Love covers a Gene Pitney tune. It’s considered one of her signature songs. Usually it is credited to the Crystals, but it is actually Love singing with a different back-up group.
Bob B. Sox and the Blue Jeans - Not Too Young to Get Married Far among my favorite Darlene Love vocals. After a short prelude, she just kicks this number into a foot-stompin’ rave-up that does not let up. It also shows some of her range.
The Ronettes - Walkin’ in the Rain This is one of Ronnie Spector’s three songs that are untouched by any others (all of which appear on this tape), original or covers. For some reason, I find oldies stations tend to play the Jay and the Americans version more often, but that’s just ridiculous (and I say that with no disrespect to Jay Black’s own amazing vocals).
The Crystals - He’s Sure the Boy I Love And yet another rave-up proclaiming love for the “boy” who is not exactly a success in life (a prequel to the Crystals’ “Uptown”?).
Darlene Love - Wait ‘Till My Bobby Gets Home Another rave up where Darlene is permitted to use her own name. This one is reflective of “My Boyfriend’s Back.”.
The Ronettes - Baby I Love You To me, this song is Ronnie Spector. It’s also Phil Spector’s production at its finest.
Currently living in Saskatoon (email at RBF55@msn.com for address). From 1977-88, I used to publish a print version of a music magazine in New York called FFanzeen, which dealt with the wide-ranging independent music scene. I also photographed many bands from the period (and since). Now I write this blog. And the beat goes on.
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