| |
Major Hoople's Boarding House
I'm Running After You / Questions in Mind - 7" Axe - 1975
Michael Panontin
|
Rocky Howell, Peter Padalino 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 mates 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.
|
Axe
|
Suggestions
Gary and Dave Could You Ever Love Me Again / Where Do We Go from Here - 7" Axe
Lewis Furey Lewis Furey Aquarius
Basic Black and Pearl There'll Come a Time, There'll Come a Day / He's a Rebel - 7" WAM
Rothadam Rebel / Contention - 7" LMP
Black & Ward Back Up (Against Your Persuasion) / This Is My Confusion - 7" RCA
|