Focus III [Original recording remastered]

Focus | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 7, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: Msi Music Corp
• ASIN: B0000DEOVL
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,639,383 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Round Goes the Gossip

2. Love Remembered

3. Sylvia

4. Carnival Fugue

5. Focus III

6. Answers? Questions! Questions? Answers!

7. Elspeth of Nottingham

8. Anonymus II

Editorial Reviews

Limited Edition Japanese pressing of this album comes housed in a miniature LP sleeve. 2008. --This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Get it before it vanishes (again), August 11, 2001

By 

Gavin Wilson - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Focus 3 (Audio CD)

Focus have been overlooked by several rock historians who should know better. For instance, the band fails to get its own entry in Donald Clarke's 'Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music.

The band has also been very poorly served on CD: there have been no re-masters until recently (only 'Moving Waves' has undergone the treatment, and I haven't yet heard it); some track listings have been re-sequenced; worse still, some tracks have been entirely omitted; across the EMI edition which I own, producer Mike Vernon's sleevenotes are identical on each CD.

Availability of these Focus CDs is extremely erratic, so when they appear on Amazon's catalogue, you should snap up the good ones as quickly as you can.

To my ear, 'Focus III' and (sometimes) 'Hamburger Concerto' are the band's really outstanding albums, though 'Moving Waves' also some real highs. 'Focus III' was a double LP, which meant it needed four manual interventions to play in its entirety. It's better suited to CD -- you can play it from start to finish with one loading, and there's the additional benefit that the classic 'Anonymous II' no longer spans two discs. For some bizarre reason which only Mike Vernon will know, 'Elspeth of Nottingham' now appears before 'Anonymous II'. And even more bizarre, the beautiful 'House of the King' (2:23 minutes) has been left off this 68-minute CD. Don't some CDs stretch to 79+ minutes these days?

I still have the LP, which I played alongside the CD yesterday. The good news is that the CD sounds better, but the album is still crying out for a proper remastering treatment with a new focussed set of sleevenotes -- pardon the pun. Sometimes the drums sound boxy; at other times, they are pumping the air from the speakers so much that I feel my ear drums will burst. Similarly Bert Ruiter's wonderful bass is always there, thick in the background, each note delivered without a percussive attack. The bass solo and subsequent climax on 'Anonymous II' remains one of the outstanding moments of 70s rock.

Focus as a group was launched onto the British market fully formed early in 1973. They had already recorded at least three decent albums, and had two cracking singles in 'Hocus Pocus' and Focus 3's 'Sylvia' to win over the Brits. Indeed, given the simultaneous onslaught by another band from the Polydor stable, Golden Earring, with their excellent 'Moontan' LP, we felt the Dutch might overrun the country. But whereas Golden Earring could be classified as a straight-ahead Stones-like band with a bit of moog and flute thrown in, Focus were harder to place: part-jazz, part-rock, part-classical. Perhaps they sit closest to some of the other jazz-rock bands of the time, but they had their own highly distinctive niche and sound.

'Focus III' is undoubtedly the band at their best. Jan Akkerman had been living in England in 1972 and become enamoured of renaissance lute music, as exmplified on the gorgeous 'Elspeth of Nottingham' here. There is not a single duff track here. There is no yodelling. But Van Leer squeezes in some singing ... in Latin. Any prog-rock album that quotes liberally from Virgil's 'Aeneid' gets my vote!

The MOJO guide calls this a 'luxuriant double set brimming with energy, improvisational brilliance, catchy tunes and exquisite taste'. In the absence of a proper CD remaster -- and there is no sign of one on the horizon -- this is the best CD by one of the 70s' finest rock-jazz bands....

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fresh and excellent unique blend of music, June 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Focus III (Audio CD)

All the way around for lovers of accoustics, this album is a classic. Each track on this album is uniquely different. Base guitar solo on Anonymus two is superb. Take the time to listen to this album and you will not regret it. Even though this recording is reaching the 25 years it has few equals.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This one ROCKS!!!!, May 31, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Focus III (Audio CD)

This is Focus's third album, and it rocks (one of their best albums). One of the best progressive bands of all time! This has fast and slow beautiful music. You should definately get this cd if you like good music. With flute, percussion, guitars, and piano/organs, make this wonderful. It is also out of print and hard to get, this is place to get it, if you want to get it. : ) ENJOY!!!!!