1970s 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. Each member picked one and promised to reunite within a year. John Murphy took up bass, while Jeff Murphy and Gary Klebe learned guitar. The three quickly began to write and rehearse original songs. Between 1974 and 1976 the group made a series of home recordings which had very limited circulation, sometimes including drummer Barry Shumaker. By 1977 the group had added a permanent 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. They had 1,000 copies pressed on their own Black Vinyl Records label, 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.
1980s and 1990s 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. == Name ==