FOCUS PLAYS FOCUS [AKA: IN AND OUT OF FOCUS]

Excellent debut. Although I did not hear In and Out of Focus until after my big brother bought Moving Waves, on the back of Hocus Pocus which caught all our imaginations when we heard it on the radio, and Focus 3, which everybody who I ever knew, in the mid to late seventies, had in their record collection. House of the King is clearly a stand out track that, along with several other tracks of that eary period of Focus, was used extensively on television as a theme tune or as background music. Now though is the time to re-evaluate the work of this band. From a Brittish perspective Focus embody two genres of mistrusted and largley despised music from the past thirty years, Progressive Rock and Music from Continental Europe that seems to come to these shore as a ready packaged pheomenon. There are some countries we seem to be able to accept certain kinds of music from but Holland and Prg Rock have only ever had fleeting acceptance in popular imagination. I dug my heels in during the mid seveties against the Soul mania that seemed to grab everyone around me. I resisted taking on Punk and abandoning all the music that I had loved until then. three goups were my badge of honour Led Zep, (whom everyone I knew had abandoned, Soft Macxhine, who I have always felt were cool and interesting and finally Focus who were simply as uncool as you could get. I found myslf drfawn into many different musical cliques whilst never being really part of any, I liked Bob Marley but was clearly not a Rastafarian, ian Dury (the first time I heard sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll in Groucho's Record Shop in Dundee, I was hooked and I started to check out Punk free from the tyrany of the style fascists) but Focus were my private world of uncool. I am pleased to be re-enbacing their music and now that I have much of it on CD (i did get rid of the worn LPs quite some time ago) they are as good as I remember. My other boyhood music which I have yet to confront as it is possibly even less cool than Focus is Status Quo. I found myslf contemplating buying On The Level recently. but I was too self concious. I am after all in my mid forties and I was standing in HMV wearin g a denim jacket, although I have not had the long hair for twenty years, I still thought that I looked too much of the stereotype Quo fan and that was too sad for word so i chickened out. But do not be a coward about Focus, In and Out of Fucus is excellent prog rocjas are moving waves (which I strongly recommend listening to from track two for the first few listenings) and Focus 3 should still be in everyone's Cd collections it is truely indespenssible