Focus - In And Out Of Focus

Released - 1970

Genre - Progressive Rock

Producer - Hubert Terheggen

Selected Personnel - Thijs Van Leer (Organ/Piano/Keyboards/Flute/Vocals); Jan Akkerman (Guitar); Martin Dresden (Bass/Vocals); Hans Cleuver (Drums/Vocals)

Standout Track - House Of The King

Years ago, Focus were one of the key elements behind my discovering a love of prog which, I'm reliably informed to this day, "is a really weird genre for someone like you to get into." In 2007, I'd never heard of it. I was vaguely aware of a band called Pink Floyd, who I didn't think I'd like, and other than that I had a head full of Supertramp and Focus songs thanks to the slow absorption of my step-dad's record collection. It was when I got to uni that a friend of mine who had spent most of his teenage years gorging himself on Floyd and the like informed me that if I liked Focus and Supertramp I would probably be a fan of prog. He suggested I listen to Floyd, King Crimson and Jethro Tull. I never looked back. So it was that this odd little Dutch instrumental group who, a couple of big hits aside, were never particularly key figures on the 70s prog scene, were central in helping me to discover a lot of my favourite music, and are still one of the most engagingly unusual prog bands you can listen to.

At this early stage of their career, Focus were near impossible to categorise. While they would go on to do far weirder and more experimental things, it's actually quite possible that this album is where they're at their most odd given just how diverse and mixed the material on offer is. The band cohered around the lynchpin of Thijs Van Leer, a classically-trained organist and flautist who would be the band's principal songwriter. Though Van Leer's yodels, scats and nonsense yelps would eventually be pretty much the only vocals that would grace the majority of the band's most popular music, at this stage he stays largely clear of vocals himself, with most of the singing being done by bassist Martin Dresden and Hans Cleuver. Then there's guitarist Jan Akkerman, whose pyrotechnic guitar work would be the other principal feature of the band's sound alongside Van Leer's frantic flute work and organ solos, up until his departure in 1976.

The inclusion of actual songs is another strong indication on this album that it was a band that didn't quite have a strong sense of their own direction yet. By far the high-points of the album are its instrumentals, pointing them towards their future style - the breathless jam of "Anonymous" is a much shorter rehearsal run through the epic jam that would grace their Focus 3 album two years later and showcases Dresden's nimble bass as well as Akkerman's explosive guitar and Van Leer's lunatic flute. "House Of The King," the only solo Akkerman composition on the album, would later go on to be one of their best-known songs after being re-released in 1972, and features Van Leer's Medieval-styled flute over the infectious guitar riff. There's also the closing "Focus" instrumental, which again acts as a platform for Akkerman's searing guitar lines over Van Leer's stately organ pattern. Despite the fact that most of the songs are written by Van Leer, it's almost always Akkerman that steals the show here, save for the odd bit of flute histrionics, though that's no bad thing, and the rest of the band more than ably support his showier moments, acquitting themselves as much more than a glorified backing band.

But the majority of the tracks here are actually more typical pop songs, given a vaguely progressive makeover by virtue of the odd Akkerman guitar wail or Van Leer flute trill. Of these, only "Black Beauty" really stands out as remotely memorable, with most of the others being fairly innocuous affair, particularly the inane "Sugar Island," which seems to be some sort of bizarre tribute to Cuba and its president ("Castro makes the poor man rich and rings the rich man's knell.") The number of traditional songs would be reduced to just one on their next album, with stellar instrumentals making up the rest, so the regrettable inclusion of such numbers here was a necessary learning curve to help them discover what they were good at.

By 1971, the rhythm section of Dresden and Cleuver would have moved on and Focus would be one step closer to its "classic" lineup. It would also soon hit upon that song which would truly catapult them into immortality, even though the rest of their career was largely spent struggling to match it. But this is where the story of one of the great forgotten prog bands begins, and it's an incendiary, characterful herald of great things to come.

Track Listing:

1. Focus (Vocal) (Thijs Van Leer & Hans Cleuver)

2. Black Beauty (Thijs Van Leer & Hans Cleuver)

3. Sugar Island (Thijs Van Leer; Martin Dresden & Jan Staal)

4. Anonymous (Thijs Van Leer; Jan Akkerman & Martin Dresden)

5. House Of The King (Jan Akkerman)

6. Happy Nightmare (Mescaline) (Thijs Van Leer; Martin Dresden & Mike Hayes)

7. Why Dream (Thijs Van Leer & Hans Cleuver)

8. Focus (Instrumental) (Thijs Van Leer)