The Shirts: “Move On Groove On” (Official Music Video)

The CBGB legends return after thirteen years with a new single that sounds like they never left

In October 2023, Robert Racioppo walked into a Park Slope grocery store and ran into an old bandmate. That chance encounter was enough to restart The Shirts, the New York band who’d spent the late seventies as CBGB regulars, cut three albums for Capitol/Harvest, and then, like so many bands from that scene, watched the world move on without them. Thirteen years after their last activity, the four original members picked up where they’d left off. The result is “Move On Groove On,” and if you’re expecting a nostalgia trip, you’re listening to the wrong band.

The official music video, directed by Vince Misiano, captures The Shirts in full flight: Annie Golden out front with the same wiry energy that made her one of CBGB’s most magnetic performers (and, more recently, earned her a Grammy for the 2022 Broadway revival of Into the Woods), flanked by Arthur Lamonica on guitar, Racioppo on bass, and John Piccolo rounding out the lineup. The song itself is pure Shirts: taut, propulsive, melodically sharp, with Golden’s voice cutting through the mix like it did when the Bowery was still the centre of the world.

Lamonica, who also fronts Rome 56 and penned The Shirts’ 1978 single “Tell Me Your Plans,” brings the same instinct for a hook that made those early Capitol records stick. The Shirts were always a band who understood that power pop and punk weren’t opposites, and “Move On Groove On” proves that understanding hasn’t dimmed. It’s a reunion single that earns its existence not by trading on memory but by being a genuinely great song.

• “Move On Groove On” is available as a 7” single (c/w “Deux Royale”) on Think Like A Key Music.
• Order the 7" vinyl single from Think Like A Key Music. Limited to 200 copies worldwide.