Half a Humdinger Review Taking the Three Crowns, Devizes

For the love of Liam Gallagher, you cashless twenty and thirty somethings who cannot resist the intoxicated urge to mount benches and dance your cares away in a boozer should take note, when we, the previous generation climbed atop of things to boogie, we did so on disused warehouse roofs, haystacks, buses, railway embankments and perhaps the odd police riot van!

You think I’m kidding? Yet, for the most part you also seem to have shunned our musical progression through technology and our repetitive beats in favour of the guitar, bass and drums combo of rock n roll of yore. Britpop is like classic golden oldie hour to you, whereas I’m still processing it. And, in doing so, you take aboard any sing-a-long pop classic from commercialised seventies prog-rock to eighties soft metal, and sugar-coat it with retrospective enlightenment despite not being born when they were conceived. The result is an obstreperous drunken melee of anything goes, as long as it’s rock. Ergo, to step into The Three Crowns after an evening of Latino funk at the Corn Exchange, is a mass mayhem musical affray just trying to squeeze into a convenient gap; sigh, at least you’re having fun!

This kind of reception is usually reserved for our homegrown cover troops, People Like Us, and those Roughcut Rebels, and indeed I note Pip nestled amidst the crowd, nodding at me because this Pewsey lot has basically taken their setlist! Yes, they are tried and tested rock classics guaranteed to pull in a crowd, but what is surprising is this bunch of crazies are Pewsey located, it is their inaugural gig in Devizes, as circuits seldom meld, the gloriously loud welcome Devizes showed them, Humdinger will undoubtedly return.

For said rock covers, even at the most cliche, (yes, Wonderwall) went down like a sack of spuds in a famine, in the hands of these capable Pewsey musicians/nutters! There’s just something offbeat about the Vale, isn’t there? Eccentric and well, bit weird in a nonchalant but no malice way! I was fully aware of how much attention Humdinger can attract over those backwaters, I’m glad to report the same level of recognition was rewarded to them here, as they thoroughly deserved it.

Excuse I can’t give a full review, only able to catch the final hour, but it was enough to confirm, Humdinger is a force to be reckoned with on the rock cover pub circuit, as they blasted out the standard issues with confidence, proficiency and a truckload of fun, as if they had only left the Moonies Fun Pub for the Coppers in the Vale! Making themselves at home, they treated us to flaunty banter and laughs aplenty, as they wriggled through a setlist from Sweet Caroline, through every hackneyed classic known to Britpop, and landed with an encore of Bon Jovi, yeah, Living on a Prayer, how did you guess?!

For an original music buff you’ll shed a tear, but again, this worked, and regularly does. As I sat among a mass of empty pint glasses as bar staff rushed off their feet like Kings Cross McDonalds workers at lunchtime, I go-figure, the formula is desired by the masses, they finish pints with the same speed the band finish a chorus, and if it is this you want, or maybe even need, to keep a pub going, a decent rock cover band is what you seek.

I’d say it again, I cannot exclude our Roughcuts or People Like Us, for they do this regularly at the Three Crowns, but Humdinger should also be firmly on your hitlist, as they certainly bought the party with them this time! Me? I can moan, at rock cover bands so plentiful on our circuit, but like bus drivers, they’re either really top quality or grumpy as fuck, and the Humdinger guys certainly are not the latter. It was a sardine sandwich squeezable shindig of millennials and others hopelessly pretending to be, it was though executed superbly without malice, just pure rocking fun, and if you didn’t have a blinding night there you should seek medical advice, not mine, I thought it rocked!