Three Crowns and Some People, Like Us

Red level weather warning, they said, only make essential journeys they said, but fail to define the terms of what is essential. Is helping an elderly relative essential, getting to work, or a doctor’s appointment? What about People Like Us playing the Three Crowns, Devizes?!

To those hunting original live music, perhaps not, for this local trio covers is their game, fully aware what will rouse a standard pub crowd, and they do precisely this with such uniqueness and deliver it with such passion, for everyone else it is, totally essential!

To catch Nicky, back on two legs after an injury which I might add, failed to prevent her performing, and behind that faithful scarlet keyboard, Dean at the strings, switching lead to bass guitars, and now skinheaded Pip, (shaved his head fundraising for our Carmela, but seems to like it,) who, even not best postured for delivering vocals, slouched over a cajon, still somehow manages to professionaly grace the moment, is, in the words of the great Yogi Bear, smarter than the average pub covers group.

Putting a finger on why opens a Pandora’s Box, aforementioned drive, skill and professionalism evident in many a covers band. Still, People Like Us submits all these qualities as if a sponge cake, then they add icing. Observing the demographic of the crowd at the Three Crowns holds a clue, every landlord desires a cross section of punter and the repertoire of this trio truly caters for them all.

Short notes I make to jog my gradually degrading memory mystify me this morning, as one simply read, “new song” adding my daughter’s name; she knows it! Silly to have thought it useful at the time, but relevant to my point. Expect a few contemporary among their plethora of pop hits, but an also era-spanning setlist to leave you guessing.

Yep, walked in to an Oasis cover, Adele’s Rolling in the Deep, Snow Patrol’s Chasing Cars, and The Stereophonics’ Dakota particularly adroitly enacted modern indie tearjerkers followed, with eighties electronica power pop such as Together in Electric Dreams, or even The Police’s Every Little Thing She Does is Magic, blended with this balanced collection. Yet with similar dedication Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters got the breathtaking PLus makeover.

Yet I believe, for People Like Us, no decade within the crowd’s indivdual most cherished era is as off the cards as genres are. They will take you back to the seventies with ELO, Fleetwood Mac, even a possible Abba(?!) covers, and with similar assertion slip in nineties britpop and indie anthems too. Tonight saw plenty of this, wonderful was Take Your Mama, by the Scissor Sisters, but particularly captivating was their rendition of the Cranberries’ Zombie, with perhaps a little too “lite” on riotous version of the Kaiser Chiefs’ classic, but Nicky wowed with authority upon covering Alanis Morissette’s You Oughta Know.

Bottom line is, it makes zero odds what the tune they’re covering is pigeonholed as, they add their stamp, and with banter between songs often verging on near tiffs, they represent reality, comfortable being what’s written on their tin; people, just like us.

Zero multiplied by anything is zero, and that should be a landlord’s percentage of doubt in considering booking this trio, if they wish their punters to return home satisfied they had a fantastic night, for that’s precisely how I’m certain the crowd at the Three Crowns last night feel this morning, perhaps with a shadowing hangover!