Powerpop band from Zion, Illinois. From their great 1977 album Black Vinyl Shoes. Small town and anonymous, but somehow special nevertheless. Perhaps because they are small town. Don't call them The Shoes!
"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.”
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