50 YEARS - ANTHOLOGY 1970-1976

This lavish box set, a six centimetres thick box of a handy CD size, contains everything that the classic Dutch band FOCUS recorded up till 1976. On the CD's we have six studio albums plus Live at the Rainbow (1973), coherently each album represented in a cardboard sleeve featuring original artwork, with bonus tracks of course, and two discs of live material. I'm not sure if the live stuff is previously unreleased or not, but for myself they remain rather uninteresting anyway. The disc featuring a BBC 1973 recording has a typical set of the band's perennials mostly from the albums Moving Waves and Focus 3, while CD No. 9 titled "Focus Live 1971 - 1975" undoubtedly offers more rare stuff. The magnum opus 'Eruption' (23 minutes on Moving Waves) recorded live in Rotterdam 1971 exceeds to 46 minutes, and in between 'Birth', 'House of the King' and 'Hocus Pocus' there are two group improvisations.

The booklet of 80 pages is pleasantly edited and documents the band's early history and the albums with a critical approach. Before dealing with the two DVD's, a few words for the albums and the bonus tracks. The debut Focus Plays Focus, a.k.a. In and Out of Focus (1970) I heard now entirely for the first time, and it was an interesting acquaintance indeed, not least because of the vocal tracks with a slight late 60's psychedelic flavour, since the subsequent albums are strongly oriented on instrumental symphonic prog. also the line-up changed after the debut; the original rhythm section of Martijn Dresden and Hans Cleuver joined Thijs van Leer on the vocal duties. The Jethro Tull-ish instrumental 'House of the King' was included on the renamed version of the album released two months later. The other bonus track is one of the earliest public performances of 'Eruption', and this 37-min version has notable differences to the album version.

Focus II a.k.a. Moving Waves (1971), Focus 3 (1972; originally a 2LP) and Hamburger Concerto (1974) form together the essence of the classic and most beloved Focus output. As for the bonus tracks, well, they're just single versions or alternate mixes of the album tracks, therefor not very noteworthy for a non-completist listener like me. The notorious fifth album Motherfuc... sorry, Mother Focus (1975) was also new to my ears, and even though the band's style had conciderably changed with obvious influences from American pop and fusion music -- leaving most of the classical and Old Music elements behind --, it's not as bad as many progheads claim it to be. Ship of Memories (1976) was assembled by producer Mike Vernon from leftover tracks of the classic era, but it "was actually pretty coherent and colourful", to cite the liner notes. This particular disc has the biggest number of bonuses, both single/ rough mix versions of the same songs and some non-album pieces, some of the material dating from pre-Focus days of 1969 when the group backed vocalist Ramses Shaffy. The curiosity value is naturally bigger than the musical value.

The two DVD's contain plenty of the classic Focus on stage, especially if measured by quantity alone. But for the musical contents per se, there's so much repetition of the same pieces that it simply gets rather tiring to view them all. How many times you wish to hear the hit 'Hocus Pocus', for example, despite the hilarious variation in Thijs van Leer's over-the-top vocal from show to show? Also it must be said that visually none of these gigs have much to write home about, and the brief Dutch TV promo spots are of minor interest only. And finally, a 50-minute "Classic Albums" programme on Moving Waves. My disappointment was big when I found out it's in Dutch with no English subtitles. Of course some English is spoken too, by e.g. Mike Vernon, but for a non-Dutch viewer it's terribly frustrating to watch, hardly understanding a word of what's being said.

Despite that lack of English subtitles and the heavy repetition of the same compositions on the bonuses as well as on the live department (both on CD's and DVD's), this finely done box set deserves a recommendation at least if you don't already have most of the albums on your record collections.