FOCUS CON PROBY

I always like the highpoints of Focus Con Proby--especially "Wingless." New guitarist Eef Albers never gets enough credit; everyone always assumes the great guitar solos and playing is known & respected Belgian maestro Phillip Catherine, but if one is to believe the credits, Phillip only plays lead on three songs (Side 1, song 5; Side 2, songs 3 & 4), while Eef has all the rest--including the great "Wingless" and the nice instrumental "Orion" (which he is credited as having composed) and the bluesy duo of "Eddy" and "Brother"--which he also composed. The fast chargin' "Night Flight" is another Eef composition which, interestingly, sounds like it could have come straight from one of Jan Akkerman's solo albums of the 1970s. (Think "Can't Fake a Good Time" from Eli). So, please, give Eef Albers some of the credit, people! He's due! He's a seasoned and gifted guitarist composer with a long career in the Dutch music scene--Toots Thielmans, Medusa, Kraan, Steve Smith, Rob Franken, Peter Herbolzheimer Orchestra, etc.

Phillip's jazzy lead & rhythm guitar work (on multiple tracks, apparently) on "Sneezing Bull"--the only song that he is listed as composer--is impressive, though some might not listen to him due to Thijs Van Leer's flute play, it is, as I said, impressive.

"Maximum" (8:43) as some people point out, falls into the realm of funk/disco that bands like Jean-Luc Ponty, Jan Akkerman, and George Duke were exploring, but there is still some serious classical Weather Report-like chops in there, too. It's actually a pretty decent song (an instrumental) with some nice bass and keyboard play from Focus old guard, Bert Ruiter and Thijs van Leer, respectively. This is also my favorite song in which Steve Smith shines--lots of sytlistic and rhythmic shifts over the course of the almost nine minutes.

Speaking of classical orientation, the gorgeous little piano and flute duet that starts out "Tokyo Rose" is nice--before PJ Proby steps in to try his best Frank Zappa vocal impersonation. Luckily, it then turns out to be more of an instrumental with intermittent narrative passages.

This is by no means a bad album, just not as cohesive or consistent as some of the previous Focus albums. I do have one further comment: the album's liner notes and credits always confused me more for the fact that if it is indeed an album of two guitarists trading off the lead and rhythm duties, it is quite remarkable how often the songs credited to Philip Catherine on the lead sound like the lead of Eef Albers. My theory is that, in fact, Eef and Philip more often shared the lead and rhythm duties even within single songs, but that the creditor was just being kind of lazy (or forgetful--or wasn't even part of the recording sessions).

Anyway, this is a a far more listenable and even enjoyable album than people want to give credit--probably due to the lack of interconnection from song to song as well as the disco and blues ruts the band had allowed their music to fall into.