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| Who needs three shoes? You do. Lensed for their Ignition comeback, 2012 |
The Shoes (that is, the individuals who constitute the band Shoes, no definite article) are all in their eighties now, except for founding member - well, they're all founding members - Gary Klebe, who will be ninety-four years young come September! Long-time residents of the Where Are They Now home for elderly power-poppers, they are unique in having released at least three first albums, the latest of which, Heads Or Tails, is actually the first, recorded in '74! I don't have this, so if you do, frisbee it over to th' Isle o' Foam©!
Extensively FoamFeatured© antecedently, (the) Shoes are arguably better than the Beatles! Hear me out! In addition to releasing three first albums, where the Fabs could manage only one:
👞 Still legally alive
👞 Never copied anyone else, covered show tunes, made a shit movie, or even a shit album
👞 Avoided marrying oriental scag pandas and finagling amputees
👞 Didn't write Maxwell's Silver Hammer
I rest my case, but th' IoF© is nothing if not a platform for diverse opinion, and if you're loopy enough to think The Beatles were a better band, light your tiki torch in the comments!
Today's freeloads pick up from where we left off, way back in May 2022, and represent the band's Imperial Period (which was and is still always) with five, maybe, fantastic platters! Details in comments!
IMPORTANT NOTE: For those of you feeling betrayed by the lack of Fab Four content:
https://falsememoryfoam.blogspot.com/2021/06/beatlemania-dept-thirty-shades-of-gray.html
https://falsememoryfoam.blogspot.com/2019/05/compleat-beetles.html
https://falsememoryfoam.blogspot.com/2021/04/hello-goodbye-george-martin-interview.html
Getting this image made with AI was easier and quicker than formatting this freaking blog piece. Really. I'm not talking about writing it - I can write as easy as I can think. I'm talking about the Industrial Revolution level of blogger technology. It's like an Amish community in here.
ReplyDeleteLoaddown will include Stolen Wishes, Fret Buzz, Silhouette, Propeller, and, uh ... I think that's it. What a swell group! But first, youse bums have to join in, especially the hundreds out there who never comment. I mean YOU, ya bums! Sittin' there in yer underwear scratchin' yer balls! I CAN SEE YOU! And it ain't too edifyin'. Gee whiz.
I always wondered why all those reggae dudes were singing about Illinois...anywho, Shoes versus Beatles...I got next to nothing for the Shoes except they show up regularly on remarkably similar "power pop compilations" as middling, uhm, middlings and the probably apocryphal story (tbh, are there really any other kind? Not that are any good) that the got their name from some Lennon or McCartny interview quip about how their name could've been The Shoes if they'd wanted to because they were so brillig it didn't matter....speaking of, The Beatles(c)(tm)(r) are both fun and occasionally brillig, so props to them, and wildly overrated. You cover most of it, but I'll add in their propensity for sounding like quite talented old timey music hall hacks--you know the songs--not out of place behind Benny Hill running amok, and that isn't good for anyone. Plus my sainted mother liked them, at least at first, so how could I possibly? Meanwhile she pegged the Stones for vaguely evil & I for one was sold. If Keef hasn't sold his soul to the Devil for all these years he's gotten playing Chuck Berry riffs....
ReplyDeletegive a guy a card and you get a novella for thanks; my bad.
ReplyDeleteFab commentage, eric! (and yes, Shoes didn't name themselves after a Lennon quote).
DeleteI dig Shoes fine. Just good old singalong pop type stuff. Good for singing along as you ride in your convertible with the wind in your hair. If I had a convertible.
ReplyDeleteIf I had hair ...
DeleteIf I could muster any wind . . .
Delete--Muzak McM
artkoen's methane powers Nigeria's National Grid. Ask him.
DeleteThat's false news!
DeleteWhat a coincidence. I am currently reading Shoes' biography Boy's Don't Lie. I was a huge fan of this band back in the late 70's/early 80's but lost track and interest as time went by. I just found out they released an album in 2007 called Double Exposure in 2007 which are demos of their 1st two albums and they rock out on these. I great regret is never seeing them live. But I am thoroughly enjoying the book as it goes over their Electra years and you really root for these guys, so talented and such great music.
ReplyDeleteTheir discography is confusing - I'll include everything I have in the download and you can sort it out yourself!
DeleteI never comment (well maybe once) and i'm wearing pants. but anywhooo i'm from Illinois and Shoes are from Illinois. so 'nuff said.
ReplyDeleteIllinois, somewhere in the French hinterland, non? And here I thought Shoes were from the great American midwest. This is like the ejication channel. --Muzak McM (who then quietly admits to being an old Illinois man himself)
DeleteFifteen albums - more Shoes than Imelda Marcos:
ReplyDeletehttps://workupload.com/file/dvpatn2DchJ
But not that recent first album, Heads Or Tales - so - if ya gots -
was the book good?
ReplyDeleteI remember when u could fit all rock bios on one normal bookshelf. now we need a library. same with rock docs. I can't imagine waiting line for release of Shoes bio but good for them who do produce them.
Highly confusing for Dutchmen like me who kind of grew up with The Shoes and can't connect to your post al all...
ReplyDeleteYou didn't even mention their big hit Na Na Na!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykpyM_LAXb0
Of course, I'm talking about the one and only DUTCH Shoes ;-)
Thanks for the American ones!
Ah yes, famed Nederlander grøüp The Clogs. "I saw a mouse, where? Under the stair ..."
DeleteAvoided marrying oriental scag pandas and finagling amputees
ReplyDeleteExplain this, please. I see words, but not a normal sentence.
And I agree with Artkoen, There is only one and that is THE Shoes. It says it right. Theo Vaness had a great career. The band here is indeed good enough for a dog with his nose in the wind in the car. 13 in a dozen. They are better than The Eagles, sure. But the genius of The Beatles doesn't lie in their worst songs. You made a thirty minute worst of special. It is the gigantic amount of people covering Beatles material. People just love to play their music. Like Beethoven and Mozart, they keep on being covered. No band comes close to that.
Thank you for joining in with the spirit of the post and deciding the Zion upstarts are no match for the long-haired lads from Liverpool!
DeleteLittle known fact. A certain band from England wrote and recorded a song in honor of The Shoes. Song was titled Sweet Virginia.
ReplyDeleteYou rascal. No wonder they banned you from the local bodega.
DeleteYeah, but I only got banned after I tried to "pay" for my purchases with my IOF trading card.
Deletedoing NOLA proud from 5000 miles away
DeleteCall me crazy, but isn't it more likely that shoes crush beatles and not the other way around?
ReplyDeleteI've tried to call you, but you won't pick up.
DeleteCrazy
thnx. had all but 8. listening now. unlike the fab4 all still alive :)
ReplyDeletelocal chicago based rock bands from the mid 60s and early 70s who landed in the national scene were always horrific mediocrities. i think the media anointed them because our local blues and r&b bands were so brilliant it made them sick. fa crissake bo diddley, chuck berry and muddy waters were local bands!
ReplyDeleteso for reps of our local rock scene we got crap like chicago, the ides of march, the flock, new colony six, and the list of the limp goes on.. oh yes, and the ever hidious styxx!!!! jesus they were shit!!
i was young and foolish when the beetles first hit and didn't know any better. the british invasion was fun for us kids and when we eventually acquired some taste the beetles were the first to go.
i skipped over the shoes as the hype made them seem to me to be to be typical chicago crap.
now i can listen to them with your giant download and maybe rethink, or maybe not.
I'm surprised such a modest, low-flying band were subject to hype. Listening to them now won't change your mind - that's not what the internet is for. The internet is for further solidifying whatever opinions you hold into the semblance of fact. And unfortunately, in spite of appearances and promises to the contrary, th' IoF© is part of the internet.
DeleteClearly poor Depravos made the mistake of listening to The Beetles instead of The Beatles, hence the early chucking. Give the latter a try, Depravos, they stuck around for a while and got even better!
DeleteC in California
This post has wrong-footed me, as I am not sure if it is an in-joke or not.
ReplyDeleteYank interviewer circa 1964 "Where did the name Beatles come from?"
George "Well, it's just a name isn't it...like shoes".
Paul "Yeah for all you know, we could have been called The Shoes".
And with that a pair of haunting short stories by Borges and Brian Aldiss concerned with fictitious cultural artefacts taking on a life of their own that crowds out the 'real' ones were vindicated.
welcome to "the garden of the forking paths"...though the one I use to help students with sorting and classification and decisions-making mechanisms is "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins" and the amazing "Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge." Fucks'em up for weeks...imagine if the Four or Five Guys sorted themselves...prolly a lot of "those that tremble as if they were mad" or "those that have just broken the vase."
ReplyDeleteJust before I was expelled from my posh school I was awarded the yearly prize for being able to write in English. One of my choices was 'Labyrinths'. That's the kind of kid I was - a supercilious irritant. And that's the kind of geriatric I am.
DeleteHere's yer PowerPoint© walk-thru:
ReplyDelete- Use of "Beatles" in headline is click-bait. "Shoes" wouldn't hook anyone not already interested in the band, or footwear in general. The number of hits this piece has had is about double the standard daily rate already. I may include "Beatles" in every headline from now on.
- Comparison is idiotic, because "better" isn't applicable. For once, the apples and oranges (or chalk and cheese) simile - or metaphor - is apt. And anyway, who cares?
- Shoes did not get their name from any Fabs quote - it's specifically denied on their web site (or somewhere).
- I do very much enjoy Shoes albums, especially Stolen Wishes and Silhouette.
- I prefer the look of Foam-O-Graphs© to AI.
I don't like the look of AI graphics. Bring back the Foam-O-Graphs©.
DeleteEven after a single day, this piece has had the most hits since November. Because of the Beatles reference. The better-known the band in the subject line, the more hits (Steely Dan, Little Feat, Neil Young etc. always get the hits). Well, duh, but this means that people (which is you, I guess) are more interested in what they already know, and come here - the internet - looking for familiar stuff, not stuff new to them. It would be nice to think that some of the hundreds of hits (it'll finish close to a thousand) this piece attracts would lead to listening to a little-known power pop band. Nice, but naive. Length of time spent on a post is also visible to me, most visits lasing a few seconds - just enough to find out that it's not about the Beatles and move on.
ReplyDeleteThe point of this is - if you're reading this comment - pretty far down the rabbit hole - you're one of the few who come here to play the game. Kudos. It was never about the numbers. Nothing that matters is.
Can't speak for anyone but meself, o'course, but a lot of why I wash up on th'Isle is the scribblin' and the dialog generated by the scribblin'; I suspect that could be a reason for a lot of those short visits (checking to see if there're more comments). I've got Shoes, and all Beatles, so no visit here, by me, was to see the familiar or big names. My tastes run a big enow gamut that everything I check has the potential to interest, and I'd venture that the majority of my downloads are of previously-unheard-to-me music.
ReplyDeleteC in California
PS Yeah, there's something creepily netherwordly about AI stuff, so I join Bambi in advocating for your homegrown graphical tastes.
Yebbut you are a 4/5g©! Endangered specie.
DeleteI was Shoeless on my vinyl shelves in spite of seeing their albums in used record stores since I was a child. I checked my iTunes and found one sole Shoes, "Too Late", that I had added from someplace in 2018. It sounded pretty good and I wondered why I hadn't given these guys a chance before. Now I've got 12 hours and 17 minutes of Shoes to go. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteIf you'll forgive some advice from a Shoes fan as to where to start: anywhere. If you can't manage that, then Stolen Wishes. I'm listening to it right now. It feels more like I do now than it did since I got off the plane.
Delete