Old Enough to Forget

I found a copy of Trooper’s debut from 1975, and this was my first time hearing the album in its entirety. Even though it contains two of the band’s best-known songs, “General Hand Grenade” and “Baby Woncha Please Come Home,” I was surprised the record didn’t go gold here in Canada. The band’s next four albums would all go platinum, with the latter two even going double platinum. What a run. The debut was produced by Randy Bachman and released on Randy’s Legend Records, although it was distributed by MCA Records  - the label Trooper would eventually move to and stay with during their commercial peak. I have always liked Trooper, and like just about every Canadian kid of a certain vintage, Hot Shots was part of the soundtrack of our formative years. I’ve had a lot of fun digging into some of their earlier albums and hearing deeper tracks I’d never encountered before. For whatever reason, the debut seems to be the forgotten Trooper record. I can sort of see why. Aside from those two...

I meant to pull out my copy of Hot Shots , but as I had recently found a couple of Trooper albums I'd not heard (which outside of their greatest hits album was pretty much everything in their catalogue), I figured why not put on something that was new to me. It was either Money Talks or Flying Colors , as there were a couple of songs I remembered from Flying Colors , so Flying Colors it was. Aren't you glad you get to get a little peek into my decision-making process? I've not heard the album, so it's the deeper tracks here I'm curious about, particularly the Frank Ludwig compositions. Frank had the unenviable position of being a decent writer and a good singer in a band where Ra was a great singer, and the songwriting team of Ra McGuire and Brian Smith were the backbone of the band. This I'm sure was a pretty sore spot, and it's not especially helpful or sporting for me to sit here and stir up the embers of what is now pretty ancient history. When Frank wa...