FOCUS THE GREATEST HITS

This is one of a budget series of CDs (mine cost £2.99) and I've seen other prog bands such as Yes in the same collection. You can tell it's a budget series as there's absolutely no information about the origin of the tracks on the inside or outside of the CD. The CD booklet just contains a track listing and photographs, so before playing the CD you have no idea if it's a studio or live recording. As it turns out, it's a double live CD featuring most of their well-known tracks such as Hocus Pocus, House of the King, Sylvia and Hamburger Concerto. As I'm not a Focus expert I don't know when or where these tracks were recorded or the line-up (although the members are mentioned on one of the tracks on CD2, Van Leer is the only name I recognised).

The sound quality is reasonably good and at least the band improvise rather than just reproduce the studio recordings. Overall it's not a bad CD for the price but not really worth any more unless you're a Focus completist, however the people concerned should be locked up for producing a CD with no information on it.