Not Enough of a Good Thing

Friday 9th January: When it comes to covers bands, I can be a bit picky. By which I mean that I, generally, know what music I like and what music the band plays - for example, I'm not likely to make any sort of effort to see a band that covers punk classics. There are some bands that I would go out of my way to see and others that I'd be quite happy with and I'm generally not averse to trying new bands if I think they will play things I like.

My main gripe with to sort of covers bands that we see in general is that they do all seem to play the same songs - you can only listen to the likes of Whitesnake's Here I Go Again and Guns 'n' Roses Sweet Child of Mine so many times in a year.

So, when I was told that York-based trio Miracles and Wonders played a mixture of the usual and unusual, I decided to toddle along to the Roman Bath to check them out.

Unfortunately, the unusual wasn't to my taste. There was too much stuff that I would put in my "Don't Like" column (The Kaiser Chiefs, The Sex Pistols, Oasis, Frankie Goes to Hollywood), a bit that would go under "Don't Really Know" (The Foo Fighters) and too little that I liked (Snow Patrol, The Darkness, Guns 'n' Roses).

I've said before that I'm not qualified enough to comment too much on the musical and vocal aspects of a performance. Suffice to say that, this time, the highlight of the vocals was during the rendition of I Believe in a Thing Called Love, which certainly stretched Pat's range a bit more than during the rest of the set.

Amazingly, however, the overall highlight came when Rhianna's Umbrella was transformed into a pretty damned good rock song. I can take or leave the original but tonight's version showed more than a spark of originality.

A more amusing moment, certainly for Andy, came when both Roj and I (who always try to work out what the songs are from the intros) simultaneously announced Turn It On Again by Genesis, only to discover a few lyrics later that it was, in fact, Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

If you like your covers with a bit more edge to them, then Miracles and Wonders may well be for you. Sadly, with my more "mainstream" tastes, they didn't do much for me.