calling. But frankly, we were starting to attract attention from other major labels, too. We had been meeting with Seymour Stein from Sire Records, and Bruce Garfield from Capitol Records also contacted us. The Elektra deal ended up being for 10 albums, including a greatest hits LP. Unfortunately, the label started to go through some tough times and shortly after we delivered the master tapes for our third LP, Boomerang, the label fired the guy that signed us (VP in charge of promotion) and they bought us out of the remainder of our deal. They ended up firing the entire staff and completely closing the West Coast office several months later.”


Any bitterness that comes out of Jeff’s mouth about Elektra emerges only when he is asked about the Shoes singles the label released, and how they marketed them. Despite the fact that nearly every song on Present Tense and Tongue Twister has radio hit written all over it, the smash single eluded the band:


“The first LP for Elektra, Present Tense, had four singles released from it: ‘Too Late’, ‘Tomorrow Night’, ‘I Don’t Miss You’, and ‘I Don’t Wanna Hear It’. They couldn’t decide which song they liked best and the record was receiving airplay on several different tracks across the country. This glut of new singles confused radio and diffused the focus. For Tongue Twister they were initially going to release ‘She Satisfies’ b/w ‘The Things You Do’, but at the last possible moment, changed their minds and destroyed those singles (we still have the printed picture sleeves) and decided to release a double A-side single of ‘She Satisfies’ (for the rock stations) and ‘Karen’ (for the Top 40 stations). I think ‘Mayday’ was the only single release from Boomerang.


“We had a good relationship with the folks at the label. They liked us, I think, and we wanted them to be happy with our music and decisions. But after the long delay before the release of Tongue Twister and the fact that they refused to fund new videos (despite the fact that MTV was newly on the scene in August of ’81 and was playing all four of the videos we filmed from Present Tense) we became frustrated with their marketing approach.”


Boomerang, the third and final Shoes album for Elektra, was produced solely by the band and was recorded on the friendly turf of Chicago. This time around the pop jewels didn’t pop out as effortlessly, yet there are a few tracks that stand out as some of Shoes’ best stuff. ‘Curiosity’ and ‘The Tube,’ both written by Klebe, are stellar powerpop songs that achieve that sweet/sour dual effect the band hits on in its peak moments.


32


When the deal with Elektra came to its close, the band was back to where they started with Black Vinyl Shoes – back home, without a label. But was this necessarily a bad thing for guys who always seemed destined to be do-it-yourself types?


Jeff: “We were disappointed after the split with Elektra, but realised that we were


They went back to recording at home, but now they did this in a more professional fashion, by handcrafting their own full- blown studio, Short Order Recorders. They eventually reformed the Black Vinyl label and returned to releasing their own material. Drummer Meyer hung around to play on most of the tracks on the first post- Elektra album, but left soon thereafter – Shoes have used several different sticksmen since then, among them Ric Menck.


“We drove every nail and screw, did all of the wiring and put all of the gear and design together ourselves,” Jeff Murphy exclaims with pride, when asked about Short Order Recorders. “It turned out to be a great sounding studio and control room. Designed and built around our own personal preferences.


“We loved working in ‘real’ studios and with other engineers and producers. We wanted to learn as much as we could about how other people worked. We always thought that we must have an unorthodox way of recording, but when it got down to it, we worked very similarly to most people. But the clock was always ticking as the meter was running, so there was a financial pressure that wasn’t there when we worked at home.”


Shoes would record three albums at Short Order over the next 15 years, releasing the latter two on Black Vinyl. Jeff explains the reason for the considerable lapse of time between releases:


“We had built, from scratch, our first official studio in ’83, but decided to relocate it into a new,


larger location in early ’86. That proved


If the shoe fits... that classic first album (top), the band’s studio, Short Order Recorders and ’79 hit single ‘Too Late’.


now free to pursue other options. There was a certain security being signed to Elektra and they had worldwide distribution. But they had been sitting on their hands for our last two albums and we wanted to see more action. Going back on our own, we built a new studio and continued as we had before, but still hoped we could land another major label deal to distribute our material.”


to be an enormous task, as it was just the three of us that did all of the construction work on it. Once we made the transition to the new room in mid-86, we were focused on establishing studio clients to help finance the studio. By mid-87 we had decided to revive Black Vinyl Records and begin issuing our catalogue on CD, starting with the Shoes Best CD in September of ’87. We began recording tracks for Stolen Wishes in late ’87/early ’88. We lost a bit of time and focus in early to mid-88 because we had been contacted by Gene Simmons about signing to his new label. We negotiated for several months, but ultimately couldn’t come to terms. So we proceeded on our own until the album was finally completed in late ’89. Because we were the writers, musicians, engineers, producers, studio owners, art department, manufacturers, promotion and marketing department and distributors of our own music, we had to constantly shift our attention to whatever phase we were in during each release. Bear in mind that we were also running the studio and re-issuing our back catalogue on CD during this time and handling those duties, too.”


Silhouette (’84), Stolen Wishes (’89), and


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