The Shirts - The Shirts One of the lesser known bands in the CBGB canon, The Shirts began opening for bands like Television and Talking Heads, after auditioning for Hilly Kristal, who would eventually become their manager. The band didn't adhere to either the stripped punk sound of
the majority of the club’s artists or higher art rock aspirations of the Heads. Instead they split somewhere between the two and would lean towards a much more traditional pop sound than some of their compatriots playing CB's and Max's. They eventually drew the attention of EMI/Harvest and would become much more popular in the UK and Europe than at home and wound up opening for Peter Gabriel shortly after the album was released. Around the time that they recorded the album in London, singer Annie Golden was also shuttling between the studio and back home where she starred in Milos Foreman's film version of Hair and some of that theatricality certainly ekes its way into their debut record. It’s more than a footnote in the history of the downtown music scene, and the band would go on to record two more albums. There were contractual issues between EMI and their US label Capitol, who took over the direction of the third album, and eventually led to poor promotion and the band's demise. Listen: Buy it HERE. (you could also probably do a few searches and turn it up digitally in a less official format as its between official versions right now).