Shoes

Shoes are an American power pop band, formed in Zion, Illinois, in 1974 by brothers John and Jeff Murphy, and Gary Klebe and incorporating several different drummers over the years including Barry Shumaker, Skip Meyer, Ric Menck, John Richardson, and Jeff Hunter. The Murphy brothers and Klebe were high school friends and decided to form a band following graduation. At the time none of the members knew how to play an instrument so each member picked an instrument to learn and promised to reunite within one year. Within the first year the 3 got back together to rehearse and eventually record their first album. Shoes' biggest hit was "Too Late" (#75, November 1979) from the album Present Tense. The big radio hit in Chicago, their home town essentially, was "Tomorrow Night" in 1980 from the same album. Additional radio play included "She Satisfies" and "Karen" from 1981's Tongue Twister, "Curiosity" and "Mayday" from 1982's Boomerang, and "Feel The Way That I Do" from 1990's Stolen Wishes, which was also included in the movie 'Mannequinn II'.

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 MTV. The band went on to do three more videos: "In Her Shadow" (1982), "When Push Comes To Shove"(1985) and "Feel The Way That I Do" (1991).

Shoes also formed their own record label, Black Vinyl Records, and owned and operated their own commercial recording studio (Short Order Recorder) from 1983 to 2004. Many artists recorded at the studio and some went on to sign major label recording contracts, including Local H and Material Issue.

In early 2007, the band released a double CD titled Double Exposure, which contains demos of their songs from the albums Present Tense and Tongue Twister. In the same time frame, Jeff Murphy published a book entitled, "Birth of A Band, The Record Deal and the Recording of Present Tense" which documents the band's inception, major label signing and subsequent recording of their first internationally distributed album, Present Tense. In January 2007 Jeff released a solo album titled Cantilever.

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