The origins of The Charades reach all the way back to the 1970's, when Jari Moberg with his friends heard a strange and cool song from the radio. It was called "Walk Don't Run '64".

Soon they discovered, that the band was called The Ventures and this knowledge gave birth to a strong desire to collect all the possible Ventures material (that somehow managed find it's way all the way to Finland). Inevitably they started to play The Ventures -styled music themselves and founded The Chameleons. The band lasted a few years and before splitting up recorded Rautalanka Records' first single.

In the mid 80's "The Chameleons fellows" started to play together again. Style was same -the Ventures styled rock instrumental- but this time they wanted to change the name: The Charades was born. Nobody is quite sure, how they ended up with the name 'Charades'. The most probable explanation is, that the band needed a name for an upcoming gig. The name itself of course originates from a Henry Mancini tune by the same name.

The Charades played purely Ventures -style instrumental music and also recorded one EP for Rautalanka Records. That recording unfortunately came from The Charades' rehearsals and the band didn't want to release it under the name of 'Charades', so it saw the light of day as 'The Creepers'. In 1989 The Charades took up the finnish singer Rock Ola to handle the vocal duties.

The first gig with Ola was played in January '90. At that same gig, The Charades also backed Cisse Häkkinen of the legendary finnish rock 'n' roll band Hurriganes and performed his songs, which included Lessons In Love, Only One, I Will Stay ja Tiger among others.

The Charades released a maxi-EP with Rautalanka Records and gigged relentlessly until bass player Tuominen decided to call it quits. After some experimenting with different bassist, they settled on Leo Eerikäinen in '92. With this line-up the band released a couple of singles and on LP. Gigs were aplenty (up to the point of becoming bored beyond belief), so they decided to quit gigging with Ola in the fall of '94. After this The Charades had some rehearsals every now and then and made some recordings, but nothing worth mentioning really happened for the next couple of years. The tapes, however, still remain in a safe place... After the two year hiatus, The Charades played a few gigs in 1998, with Jussi Humaljoki in vocals.

Now the band has recorded many albums full of instrumental music and two of those records has voted "Album Of The Year" by European leading instro Mag: Pipeline-magazine! The Charades has been four times in UK, three weeks European Tour, two times in Italy and one week tour at Japan in February 2005 (go to the photo gallery) and again in September 2006. This time around, however, the gigging will be kept in a tighter leash and there will be performances only a few times per month. At the instrumental shows, the programme will be consisting of the latest album's material and some Ventures classics. In Finland The Charades also plays half set instrumental and half set beat music from the 60s. Then their vocalist is bass player Jukka Väisänen.

Records:

The Charades solistina Rock Ola: Beat Goes On EP, 1991

Rock Ola & The Charades EP, 1992

Rock Ola & The Charades CD, 1993

The Charades In Motion, 2001

The Charades: Supersonic Action, 2003

The Charades: Cool Blast!, 2004

The Charades: Pops In Japan, 2005

The Charades: Rautalanka Collection, 2005

The Charades: Pops In Japan -Japanese Edition, 2006

The Charades: On Stage, 2006

The Charades: 007 (For Promotion Only), 2007

The Charades: Wild cardS, 2008

+ Pipeline Convention DVD, Live in UK, 2002

+ Pipeline Convention DVD, Live in UK, 2004

+ Pipeline Convention DVD, Live in UK, 2007

On Tour:

UK, 2002

European Tour, 2003

Italy & UK, 2004

Japan, 2005

Japan & UK, 2006

Japan & UK, 2007

Sweden & Italy, 2008