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Review: Focus, Fleece
Many bands of seventies vintage tend to get locked in to endless album anniversary tour cycles. Not so Focus. With that 50th anniversary now firmly behind them, the venerable Dutch proggers are rarely off the road. While it would be untrue to say that they always play the same show, the current line-up clearly has some preferences from the band’s extensive back catalogue, which are ferociously well-rehearsed. So it comes as no great surprise to find their latest performance at the Fleece follows much the same pattern as their previous show here in March 2022 (and, indeed, the one before that in June 2019): the scene-setting Focus I (introduced as the first Focus composition), which established that trademark sound, followed by the first hit (but only in Holland and the Flemish part of Belgium, as avuncular Thijs Van Leer is always careful to remind us), House of the King. One of the band’s briefest compositions, and often erroneously believed to be by Jethro Tull, this magnificent slice of uptempo melodic flutey prog remains fondly remembered by seventies kids as the theme tune to Magnus Pyke’s TV science show Don’t Ask Me and by everyone else as the theme tune to Steve Coogan’s Saxondale.
There’s no time to pause to reflect on Focus’s knack for writing great tunes with endless appeal to filmmakers and advertisers, as they take a deep dive into the other side of their repertoire – lengthy hardcore seventies prog, boasting multiple mood shifts – with the 15-part Eruption (aka side two of Moving Waves, or Focus II), a loose rock adaptation of Jacopo Peri’s opera Euridice, with a bit of Monteverdi chucked in for good measure. This gives everybody a great opportunity to demonstrate their chops. Thijs shuffles out from behind his vintage Hammond for some tootling, which gives way to scat singing (with audience participation) while Menno Gootjes gets a searing guitar solo that’s every bit the equal of anything played by the departed Jan Akkerman, and tireless drummer Pierre van der Linden once again demonstrates remarkable stamina for man of 77. Only last week he won a Best Prog Drummer award, and deservedly so. Like hugely talented newer recruits Gootjes and six-string bassist Udo Pannekeet, his background is in jazz, which helps to give Focus’s music such a distinctive feel.
is needed now More than ever
Once again, the set takes in a brief instrumental tribute to original bassist Bert Ruiter, who died a few days before Focus last played here, plus All Hens on Deck, the jaunty stand-out track from 2012’s Focus X and a thunderous Harem Scarem, which winds up sounding like a 747 coming in to land and has plenty of crossover appeal to fans of extreme metal.
Obviously, there’s no shortage of loyal prog greybeards here tonight, but Focus continue to pull a remarkably diverse audience, which is regularly refreshed whenever any of their songs get any mainstream attention.
The other hits, Sylvia and Hocus Pocus, get long, teasing intros, while the yodeltastic latter is also swollen by the traditional epic drum solo, which would surely continue until dawn if the rest of the band didn’t return to the stage for the big finale. After more than two hours, they conclude with a sublime reading of the title track from this reviewer’s favourite Focus album, Focus III (a top ten UK hit in 1972, fact fans). Do play some more from that masterpiece next time, chaps.
Read more: Metal & Prog Picks: November 2023
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