Focus

Focus + Guranfoe

They say that what goes around comes around, and it’s certainly the case with the fluctuating fortunes of Progressive rock. Not long ago, Thijs van Leer yodelling his way through Hocus Pocus on the Old Grey Whistle Test was the go-to heritage clip for silly documentaries perpetuating the myth that punk swept away all before it. Those of us ancient enough to actually remember the facts of the case will know that there was always room in the diary for anyone not allowed on Top of the Pops, and disaffected youth such as I were happy to go see the Enid one week and the Dead Kennedys the next. Thankfully, now the dust has settled and we’ve all grown up a bit, complex music played by accomplished musicians is finally a socially acceptable thing to go see and enjoy.

In support of both Focus, and that proposition, are Guranfoe, an improbably youthful band from South Norfolk that appeared to have been beamed direct from the 1970s, playing what they describe as a blend of progressive rock, free jazz and psychedelic fusion.  James Burns and Ollie Snell swapped lead and rhythm duties with ease, while Robin Breeze’s emphatic bass lines and Joe Burns’s superb drumming kept up the momentum. With complex time signatures and unfathomable key changes, they brought to mind the meticulous playing of Robert Fripp mixed with the driving funk of late Weather Report, offering up something that was much more than a nostalgia-fest for us chin stroking oldies. Other opinions are available on Outline, but I think they are a terrific local band deserving of more recognition.

Focus, just so we are clear, also offered much more than nostalgia, but when they first took to the stage, I had a moment of disorientation. There have been personnel changes over the years on bass and guitar – not surprisingly given that the band first performed back in 1969 – but who was that avuncular, kindly looking old gent behind the Hammond organ? To me, Thijs van Leer was now unrecognisable from the lithe young man that gurned and improvised his way through the 70s, though clearly not to his proper fans who I’d previously seen bagging selfies in the bar with a sweetly smiling old bloke that had a twinkle in his eye.

Fittingly for a band so revered, we were seated as a congregation might be, listening in hushed silence as Thijs van Leer’s haunting flute opened the show, before the band joined him with the busyness and complexity you’d expect from Prog rock. This was the opening night of the band’s brief UK tour, and while there appeared to be some initial technical problems, by the time we got to House of the King the band was off and running. It’s one of those tunes registered deep in the back of the mind, albeit through repeated use as a TV intro, rather than commercial success, but then the then “Hits”, as Leer quaintly coined, were never what the band was about, as the immersive and enveloping Eruption demonstrated. With long-time drummer Pierre van der Linden coming into his own, this was proper hard-core progressive noodling at its finest. More of the same followed, with a band seeming to gain in confidence as the evening progressed.

The set was peppered with a few songs off of the new album, ably demonstrating a continuing vitality and development in their compositions, and we were even treated to that elusive hit. However ignorant you may think you are regarding Focus, at some time or another you would have heard and probably liked Sylvia, perhaps wondering who performed and made a career out of such eccentric, and largely instrumental, music. The aforementioned Hocus Pocus is one of the few of theirs to include a vocal, and having been rehabilitated and consequently re-evaluated by its inclusion in Edgar Wright’s superb Baby Driver, it was perhaps inevitable that the band would close with it. Thijs van Leer yodelling was as powerful, and nutty, as ever, and though I thought it a pity it was broken up by Linden’s interminable drum solo, Menno Gootjes and Udo Pannekeet had already had a turn on guitar and bass, so I guess it was only fair. These are the rules, I was reminded, of prog rock, and all the proper fans loved it, so who am I to carp?