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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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ROGER CHAPMAN & THE SHORTLIST, 100 Club,
London November 11th, 2005 |
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I
have to admit that Roger Chapman and I go back some.
In fact it’s 1970 (remember – we all
used to make our own entertainment then?) and I’m
at Birmingham Town Hall with a couple of mates for
My First Proper Concert, and it’s Roger
Chapman fronting Family (picture),
touring to promote their fourth album, Anyway. |
| Now
for those of you who don’t know, or who don’t
or can’t remember, Family were that strangest
of strange bands, ‘snotty little Leicester
louts’ from the East Midlands who, proud of
their non-cosmopolitan working class roots (“everyone
thought that we took acid all of the time, but we’re
much more of a working class sort of band …”)
never quite fitted in wherever they went, and no
more so that the USofA, where Chapman’s unrealised
attempt to decapitate Bill Graham (the famous evangelist
rock promoter) at the Fillmore, with a characteristic
twirl of his microphone stand, brought their international
career to an abrupt end, or so the stories go. After
that Birmingham gig (something of an adventure,
as I ended up sleeping overnight in Birmingham New
Street Station, quite a rock and roll experience
for a young kid from the country) I saw Family twice
more, the last time in Oxford on their farewell
tour (as I write I have the Zig Zag tour programme
– 10p – on my desk) in 1973. By then
they had already started to turn their back on their
more psychedelic tendencies, bringing in the boozy
and beefy Tony Ashton to replace vibe player and
Moog experimenter Poli Palmer on keyboards. |
| This
beery and blokey outlook defined their next incarnation
– Streetwalkers (picture) –
formed around Chapman and guitarist and co-writer
from Family, Charlie Whitney. I saw them once –
a brawl of a night at Banbury’s Winter Gardens
(apparently the Stones and the Who played there,
but before I pitched up in the place back in ’68)
when the bouncers, fresh from their tractors, decided
to kick eight pounds of shit out of one of the road
crew for dancing (it was a Sunday night, and there
was no dancing license). |
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An
incensed Chapman responded by trying to decapitate
the bouncers with the mike stand (are you beginning
to get the picture …?) and the evening turned
into a standoff between band, audience and management.
Streetwalkers didn’t last too long –
Chapman and Whitney broke their knot – and
Chapman went into a sort of retirement before producing
the R&B infused Chappo in 1979. It’s still
a quite brilliant album, but sadly became something
of a template that Chapman and his band, The Shortlist,
have followed in most of their subsequent recordings.
We saw him launch the album somewhere in Victoria
in a club owned by Richard Branson – strangely
one of the highlights of the evening was when he
tried to decapitates a couple of leery drunks at
the front of the stage with the – you-know-what.
After that it was probably twenty years before we
came face-to-stage again. In the meantime Chappo
had taken off to Germany (and German Whiskyfun readers
please note – he’s starting a short
tour there in December) where, like many a lost
monster of British rock and roll, he’s forged
a pretty successful career. And released a fistful
of albums, albeit all somewhat formulaic and derivative
of the blues and soul feel of Chappo. It was at
the original Meanfiddler up in Acton – and
a pretty good gig, though clearly the Chapman voice
was nowhere near as strong as it had been years
before. Five years later, and having just celebrated
his solo career’s silver anniversary Chappo
is back in London at the 100 Club. It’s late
on a Friday night, it’s hot and it’s
packed, there’s beer in glasses, on the floor,
on the wall … well everywhere. |
 |
The
prostateically challenged are queuing for the Gents,
there are fathers and daughters (“I’ve
never heard of Robert Cheeseman” one confided
in The Photographer in the secrecy of the Ladies
loo, “I’m just here to make sure Dad
gets home safely” – later she’s
spotted dancing passionately with a stranger) and
to our left a very drunken bus-party of balding,
middle-aged, check-shirted rocket scientists are
swaying in anticipation, lager bottles and clandestine
cigarettes in their hands. |
| So
I was not surprised to see a heavier Chapman take
the stage, or to see that his once trademark mike-stand
callisthenics were heavily subdued (though he can
still knock the living daylights out of a tambourine).
Nor did I expect much of his interplay with the
audience, which as I anticipated, had not moved
on much in thirty years, “Fuck me, that’s
alright then”, “Fucking hell, what’s
next”, “Woa, that was a bit of a fucker
…”. Indeed, I might often have been
tempted to think that Chapman was somewhat inarticulate
were it not for the fact that I’ve read a
fistful of quite thoughtful interviews with him
over the years, and that he’s often forgotten
as the lyricist in Family, responsible for songs
such as ‘My friend the sun’ (“This
used to be a lovely fucking song ‘till you
fuckers got hold of it” complained Chapman
to the tuneless sing-along audience), ‘Burlesque’
(“right down to my snakey spat shoes”)
and of course the absolute classic ‘The Weaver’s
Answer’ (“Weaver of life, let me look
and see, the pattern of my life gone by shown on
your tapestry”). |
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And
for what it’s worth, he’s written or
co-written much of his more recent material too.
I suppose the disappointment, though not surprise,
was just that The Voice, probably at one time the
most unique in rock, can’t quite make it anymore.
Don’t get me wrong – it wasn’t
as bad as, lets say, Stephen Stills a few months
ago, but it just couldn’t quite get to that
pitch or frequency that in his prime was simply
spine-tingling. And it was noticeable that the band
carried him by drawing out many of the tunes to
give him a good old rest now and again. Well deserved
I’d say.
Now for once, as The Photographer managed to divert
the attention of the road crew by harassing Chapman
for an autograph, I managed to get hold of a set
list from the stage. Do you know people sell these
on e-bay? Why, I’m surprised they don’t
just fake them. |
| This
one listed nineteen songs, but I doubt if we got
more than twelve of them, and certainly not in the
order listed, so not much help there then. But in
addition to the three Family numbers we definitely
got ‘Kiss my soul’, ’18 wheels
and a crowbar’, ‘X-town’, and
‘Kick it back’. Not being too familiar
with some of this later stuff I was, to be honest,
at a bit of loss, but helpfully the projecting fists
of the rocket scientists was a useful guide to both
perceived quality and the overall excitement (and
lager) level in the room. Of course by the time
we got ‘Weaver’s answer’ as an
encore they were beside themselves - I thought the
one standing on a chair was probably going to take
off. |
 |
| And
we were all pretty happy too – after all it’s
not that often you can spend such a pleasurable
few hours in such close proximity to a true hero
of rock, who apparently swears (“fuck me …”)
that he’ll never retire. But here’s
a thought. Just in case he does, why not go out
and buy one of his albums, just to help with the
hard earned pension ... - Nick Morgan (concert
photos by Kate). |
Check
the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
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