Annie Golden
Lead vocals
Lead vocals. Discovered by director Miloš Forman at a CBGB show in 1977 and cast as Jeannie in the film of Hair (1979). Later: Broadway, Cheers, Orange Is the New Black.
Origins — Park Slope, 1972
The Shirts began writing together in 1972, in Brooklyn. Six musicians who would spend the next decade as one of the tightest live units to come out of New York — Annie Golden (vocals), Artie Lamonica and Ron Ardito (guitars), John Piccolo (keyboards), Robert “Bob” Racioppo (bass) and John “Zeeek” Criscione (drums) — lived and rehearsed communally in a four-story Park Slope house outfitted with its own sound studio. The walls were scrawled with Yankees baseball scores. For three years they played any gig they could get — block parties, opening slots for an X-rated comedian-hypnotist — slowly evolving from a mediocre cover band into a formidable original act.
CBGB — 1975 to 1977
In 1975, a friend brought them down to Hilly Kristal's club on the Bowery. CBGB's originals-only policy forced them to drop the covers. “Our first gig there was with Television,” Racioppo remembered. “Our second with Talking Heads.” They settled into the house grind: “Thursday through Sunday, two sets a night. That's what made all the bands better.” Over the next two years their audience grew from a dozen scattered drinkers to a packed room with people jammed against the stage.
They were the last of the original CBGB bands to land a record deal. EMI A&R man Nick Mobbs caught them opening for Deaf School in 1977 and signed them to Capitol/EMI/Harvest. The same year, director Milšoš Forman walked into a Shirts show at CBGB looking for a face. He cast Annie Golden as Jeannie in the film of Hair.
The Capitol Trilogy — 1978 to 1980
The self-titled debut was cut in London in 1978 with producer Mike Thorne, while Annie commuted to the Hair set. “Tell Me Your Plans” hit No. 4 in the Netherlands; the album peaked at No. 22 on the Dutch chart. Street Light Shine followed in 1979, recorded at Mediasound Studios in NYC, again with Thorne. “Laugh and Walk Away” charted at No. 10 in Holland. They toured Europe three times. They opened for Peter Gabriel.
Inner Sleeve in 1980 was where the cracks showed. EMI was gone. Mike Thorne was gone. Capitol's business people had taken over, and pressed exactly 10,000 US copies. Almost no one in America knew it existed.
Post-Capitol — 1980 to 1983
The Shirts walked away from Capitol. They kept playing — clubs and theatres and college rooms from Boston to New Jersey, two sets a night, sometimes carrying their own gear. In 1981 they cut a live session at Mark “Moogy” Klingman's Hi-Five Studios at 520 West 54th Street — the former Bell Sound complex where Buddy Holly and the Rolling Stones had recorded. Sixteen-track Ampex tape, four Sony color video cameras, fourteen unreleased songs. Tiny Tim was in the audience.
The shows kept coming through 1983 — The Bottom Line in New York that June, City Gardens in Trenton in March. The original lineup quietly wound down over the next year, with a final billed show at CBGB in 1985 before the band went dormant. After roughly a decade together, three Capitol albums, and three European tours, the run was over — for now.
Aftermath — 1982 to today
“Despite many highs and lows, including the untimely death of guitarist Ronnie Ardito, the band has persevered and continues to record. I particularly love one song they wrote called ‘Tina of the Talking Heads.’ You can imagine why.”
— Chris Frantz, Remain in Love (2020)
Annie Golden pivoted to acting almost immediately — Broadway, a recurring role on Cheers, and decades later a long stretch on Orange Is the New Black. Her bandmates kept playing too, alongside day jobs that ran a wide spectrum: a major construction contractor running hotel and school builds, a fashion buyer, a high-level massage therapy teacher, a sheetrocker, a security-systems installer, and one selling paintings on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum on Fifth Avenue. By night, they pursued the music to the point of exhaustion.
The first reunions started quietly. Late-'90s benefit shows at CBGB, an informal Thursday-night rehearsal habit, and by 2003 a formal reformation — Annie sat in for a one-off but didn't stay. Caren Messing and Kathy McCloskey took up the vocal slack; as one reviewer put it, it took two singers to fill her shoes. With Mike Thorne back in the producer's chair and Hilly Kristal pulled back in as their NYC manager, the reunited group cut Only the Dead Know Brooklyn (Stereo Society, 2006) — rough takes captured live at CBGB, finished at Thorne's studio — followed by The Tiger Must Jump in 2010, recorded at South Brooklyn Sound with engineer-producer Joe Ford.
The full original-six reunion happened by accident. In October 2023, Bob Racioppo ran into Annie on a Park Slope sidewalk. He'd just written a song called “Move On Groove On.” She agreed to help him finish it. The whole original lineup — together in a studio for the first time since 1982 — was back at it inside a week. The 7-inch came out on Think Like A Key Music in 2024.
That partnership kept going. Artie Lamonica had already been working with TLAK on releases by his current band Rome 56 — alongside his wife and Rome 56 bandmate Kathy Lamonica, the same Kathy McCloskey who'd held down Shirts vocals through the 2000s reunion years. Conversations turned to legacy material, and Artie opened the storage boxes that had followed him through four decades of moves. The result is an ongoing TLAK Shirts archival series: Live feat. Annie Golden (TLAK1216, 2025), drawn from the aforementioned 1981 Hi-Five Studios session; and Live At Paradise 1979 (TLAK1236, 2026), a WBCN-recorded Boston broadcast tape. Both restored by Prof. Stoned and his team at Dutch Tape Transfers in Utrecht.
Forty-some years on, the sound is still in the room.