The 1981 Listening Post - Roger Chapman and the Short List - Hyenas Only Laugh for Fun

 Roger Chapman and the Short List - Hyenas Only Laugh for Fun

#695

December 1981

Roger Chapman and the Short List

Hyenas Only Laugh for Fun

Genre: Rock

3.5 out of 5

Highlights:

Prisoner

John Wetton pops up all over the place, you know?

He plays bass on this. 

I don’t know anything about Family so I don’t know Chapman. He comes from that 70s blues singer Cocker-esque raspy voice school. 

I miss that school. No one sounds like this anymore. Everything is so auto-tuned and perfect…the world needs more singer who sound like they smoke unfiltered Pall Malls. 

This thing is all over the place but it rocks in places and new waves in others but all sounds like someone from a bygone era trying to fit in in a new world. 

It’s really not a pretty record, either. A good example is “Common Touch”. Which I think could actually be a good or at the very least, interesting epic but it’s so poorly recorded that it makes me wonder what could have been.

https://music.apple.com/us/album/hyenas-only-laugh-for-fun/1440393329

The 1980 Listening Post - Roger Chapman and the Shortlist - Mail Order Magic

Roger Chapman and the Shortlist - Mail Order Magic

#170

1980 Housekeeping

Roger Chapman & the Shortlist

Mail Order Magic

Genre: Glam Rock

3.25 out of 5

Highlights:

Unknown Soldier

Hey, Joe Cocker, this is what you should be trying to sound like. Take your raspy blues and get in front of a band that can actually pound the skins with conviction and you might come close to this record. 

Roger’s voice is unique. He has the same incessant vibrate that caused record labels to tell Beth Hart that she was unmarketable. Fuck them. I’ve never heard him and, you know what? I like what I hear. I don’t wanna hear a double album of it (looking at you, Stevie Moore) and he’s not the best songwriter, either, but I wouldn’t mind hearing him cover some…Boomtown Rats songs. I know that seems weird but I think Geldof’s voice is sufficiently bizarre in a similar way at times and he knew how to write to it. 

Roger can’t tell if he wants to be Rod Stewart or Randy Newman and ends up in a different neighborhood entirely. 

Trouble is, his songs aren’t really any good. 

https://music.apple.com/us/album/mail-order-magic/1440393497