The Hooples Album

Rocky Howell, Peter Pandalino and Rick Riddell formed the Shan-de-leers as high school buddies at Galt Collegiate Institute in 1967 in what is now Cambridge, Ontario. But with the addition of singer/bassist David Lodge soon after graduation and keyboardist Gail Truscott the next year, the band changed their name to the lumbering Major Hoople's Boarding House (after Major Hoople's long-running syndicated comic strip, Our Boarding House), and then set their sights on the pop charts. They spent much of the early seventies honing their sound at clubs in and around the Kitchener-Waterloo area, releasing a string of singles that for the most part tanked. However, things started to look up when Major Hoople's Boarding House ditched Polydor for Greg Hambleton's smaller Axe imprint. The band hit pay dirt when their first single for the label, 1975's infectious 'I'm Running After You', crept into the top 30 later that year. With Lodge's soaring falsetto and the band's mellifluous harmonies not far behind, 'I'm Running After You' recalls those glorious days of AM radio and its string of early-seventies one-hit wonders. A follow-up, 'You Girl' / 'Barnstormer' also saw some chart action, but, alas, Lodge left before the band had much of a chance to capitalize on their "hit", and as the lopped-off Boarding House, they did a cross-Canada tour, but by then their time in the limelight was just about up. -Michael Panontin Michaels site: http://www.canuckistanmusic.com/index.php?maid=222 David Lodge: vocals, bass, saxophone (passed away in 1986) Peter Padalino: lead guitar, vocals Rick Riddell: drums Ed Miller: drums Richard "Rocky" Howell: lead vocals, acoustic guitars Keith Stahlbaum: bass Peter (Moss) Beacock: keyboards, vocals Gail Selkirk: keyboards, vocals Dave Gooding & David Gregg: horns Produced by Greg Hambleton Engineered by Terry Brown, Steve Morris and Jim Frank