Shoes (American band)

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Shoes is an American rock band formed in Zion, Illinois in 1974. The group's musical style is influenced by British Invasion groups of the 1960s and has often been described as "power pop". The original members were brothers John and Jeff Murphy, Gary Klebe and Skip Meyer. Shoes formed their own record label, Black Vinyl Records in 1977, and later recorded three albums for Elektra Records. With the debut of MTV in August 1981, Shoes were one of the first groups to be shown on the music video channel.|width=26%|align=right|style=padding:8px;

Between 1974 and 1976 the group made a series of home recordings which had very limited circulation. By 1977 the group had added drummer Skip Meyer. The same year they also recorded the album Black Vinyl Shoes in the Murphy family living room. The band used a consumer grade 4 track reel to reel machine made by TEAC. The band had 1,000 copies pressed on Black Vinyl Records, and sold it at local record stores and by mail order through Bomp! magazine. Shoes then entered a professional studio for the first time and released a single "Tomorrow Night" on Bomp! Records in June 1978. The following November Black Vinyl Shoes was licensed to PVC Records, which re issued the album to national distribution in the US. It was also released in the UK by Sire Records. The group signed to Elektra in April 1979 and released their first major label album, Present Tense, that September. The album was produced by Mike Stone at The Manor Studio in Oxfordshire, England. It peaked at number 50 on the Billboard 200 and yielded the minor hit single "Too Late" which reached number 75 on the Billboard Hot 100 and lasted 5 weeks on the chart. The album also included a new recording of "Tomorrow Night" which Elektra later released as a single.

When MTV went on the air on August 1, 1981, the channel aired four of Shoes' videos: "Too Late", "Tomorrow Night", "Cruel You" and "In My Arms Again", making Shoes one of the first bands to be shown on the channel.

The group's name does not originate from an interview the Beatles granted on their first American tour in February 1964. In Boys Don’t Lie: A History of Shoes by Mary E. Donnelly (New York college professor and managing editor of PurePopPress. com) with Moira McCormick in interviewing John Murphy, the following exchange occurred:

Much ink has been spilled debating the meaning of the band's name. John absolutely insists that he was unaware of a CBS News interview from February 10, 1964, in which John Lennon, dismissing a similar question about their moniker, quipped, "It means Beatles, doesn't it? But that's just a name, you know, like 'shoe'." Paul McCartney immediately chimed in, "The Shoes, you see? We could have been called the Shoes for all you know." But if the band's name was intended to be an intentional evocation of that moment, there would certainly have been a "The," which there isn't. Asked why, John says, "I guess Shoes just sounded right like 'look at those cool shoes' or 'where are my shoes?' it was like Sparks or Wings or Faces or even Big Star The first time we heard the 'the' was from a writer we winced and corrected him. 'No, no it's just Shoes.' 'The Shoes' just rubbed us wrong.