FOCUS CON PROBY

A "strange" album from FOCUS. "Strange" because it is really a Jazz-Rock album from a band called FOCUS. An album which has very little in common to other albums of the band. It is also "strange" because it was done in collaboration on five of the nine tracks with American lead singer P.J. Proby. I really don't know who had the idea to record this very atypical FOCUS album in 1977. It is not a bad album, and in fact all the musicians played very well in this album, but it is a very different album from FOCUS.

The only thing that I knew about P.J. Proby was his 1965 single with "That Means a Lot" on the A-Side (Produced by George Martin), a song that John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote, and THE BEATLES tried to record a proper version of this song in 1965, never been satisfied with their versions of this song, and the song was not released until 1996 in their "Anthology 2" album. So, knowing that Proby really is a Pop Rock singer with a long career, for me it is "strange" to see him appear in this album, and more in a Jazz-Rock album in musical style. He appears singing in five of the nine songs in this album (and curiously, all five written mostly by Thijs van Leer in collaboration with Rosalie van Leer, who maybe wrote the lyrics): "Wingless", "Eddy", "Brother", "Tokyo Rose" and "How Long". Proby sings very well in the Jazz-Rock oriented songs, even adding some Soul and Blues influences in his vocals.

The rest of the songs (with some songwriting collaborations from then new guitarists Eef Albers and Philip Catherine, and also from Bert Ruiter, and sometimes with Thijs van Leer) are very typical Jazz-Rock instrumental pieces similar to others from other artists from the same musical genre from the mid to late seventies (JEAN- LUC PONTY, JEFF BECK, BRUFORD, etc.). So, they don't sound very related to the "old" Prog Rock musical style from FOCUS. Maybe Thijs van Leer and Bert Ruiter wanted to play this kind of music, but maybe the change of musical style was "drastic". The new guitarists are very good. The same can be said about drummer Steve Smith (who also played with JEAN-LUC PONTY during that period of time, before joining JOURNEY in 1978, in an also "drastic" change in musical style). I still think that he is a very good drummer but his style is more for the Jazz- Rock style than for the Pop Rock style of JOURNEY.

Well. This is not a bad album. But it seems to me that FOCUS really was losing their "focus" in their musical direction, looking for new musical styles without finding them to really feel themselves satisfied. Maybe by 1977, with Prog Rock losing some of its popularity, they really didn't know what to do. In fact, the band split after this album for several years.