Focus - Lint 18/01/2004

The first concert of the year was an unexpected one: I went to see Dutch 70s prog-rock group Focus with my girlfriend's family. Her parents invited us.

I felt the first set a bit over-blown: songs containing relatively simple elements divided up into endlessly repeated sections, some slightly embarrassing baroque licks on guitar, a 5/4 hammered out on drums... at times I felt like shouting out "Cut the crap and get to the song!"

The second set was more direct, as they played older, shorter songs. Still, the proclivity for treacly "soaring," long note guitar melodies remained. There was a cool moment when leader Thijs Van Leer (the only original member left, I think) did an unaccompanied melodica (playing light-hearted stuff), flute (a little classical for ya) and vocal (funny nonsense) segment, before running back to his Hammond organ. It made me wonder how expensive a melodica is: I really want to get one.

The highlight of the concert, for me, came right at the beginning, in discovering that the organ (a 16th-note run up a B minor triad) and guitar (slow, spacey notes hovering around the tonic) had been appropriated (and not been credited!) by Outkast for "Wheelz of Steel" (from ATLiens, an absolutely fantastic album, about which I hope to write soon) from Focus's "Focus III," the first song of the concert. One could get mad, but "Wheelz of Steel" is a much better song than "Focus III"...

LATE ADDITION:

I know that saying this will inevitably make me sound like a fuddy-duddy, but the concert was needlessly loud. Surely, when in relatively quiet sections, such as guitar-organ interludes, speaker buzz turns it into a trio, someone, somewhere must surely think "Something's wrong here." But no. Although in some corners of the music world, speaker buzz is considered music, I don't think that was the intent here. So, the question is: why?