The origins of Trooper are sourced from two Vancouver bands: Winter’s Green and Applejack. They became Trooper when they signed to Randy Bachman’s Legend record label in 1974.
Written by: gdmonline
ARTIST: Trooper
ALBUM: Trooper
LABEL: Legend Records, MCA
SERIAL: MCA-2149
YEAR: 1975
CD REISSUE: Discogs Reissue List
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Canada
LINEUP: Ramon ‘Ra’ McGuire – lead vocals, harmonica * Brian Smith – guitars, backing vocals * Harry Kalensky – bass, backing vocals * Tommy Stewart – drums, backing vocals
Additional Musicians: Randy Bachman – lead guitar, production
TRACK LISTING: 01 I’m In Trouble Again * 02 General Hand Grenade * 03 All Of The Time * 04 Eddy Takes It Easy * 05 Roller Rink * 06 Baby Woncha Please Come Home * 07 Love Of My Life * 08 Don’t Stop Now
Background
The origins of Trooper are sourced from a 60’s era Vancouver band called Winter’s Green which formed in 1967. They released a single in 1968, then morphed into the band Applejack (the band at this point included all the members listed above) but they changed their name to Trooper when they signed to Randy Bachman‘s Legend record label.
L-R Kalensky, Stewart, Smith, McGuire
The Songs
Bachman, fresh from his stints with Bachman Turner Overdrive and The Guess Who would go on to produce this debut record. Though the record carried an MCA serial number, the Canadian version was also released on Legend Records.
The album featured two singles: ‘General Hand Grenade’ (with ‘Don’t Stop Now’ the flipside) along with ‘Baby Woncha Please Come Home’ (with ‘Roller Rink’ being the flipside). Both were minor hits in Canada, paving the way for Trooper to land one or two singles on each subsequent album. The band become more popular as time wore on.
In Summary
Though a popular band in Canada and signed to a significant label MCA throughout most of their career, trying to find their early albums on CD has proven to be a difficult exercise, as there has only been CD reissues of each album between 1990 and 1995, but this album was not included among them.
This was probably due to Legend Records holding the original rights. During the 70’s Trooper were very active, releasing 10 albums between 1975 and 1991. You should do yourself a favour by investigating their back catalogue. We’ll be writing up a few more into the future.
Video
Baby Woncha Please Come Home
General Hand Grenade
[Nick C] Trooper are a strange band – I really don’t understand their place in the heart of the Canadian public. Over the years I have owned most of if not all their albums and apart from 1980’s also self titled release, find them to be rather twee and cheesy with some real cornball arrangements and lyrics – never a consistent album for me until the aforementioned 1980 release. I bought Money Talks after that in a hope that they would keep that momentum up just to find that they had slipped back to the norm. I have only kept that 1980 Trooper album and picked up the CD Hits From 10 Albums – but even that has some clunkers on it like Two For the Show.