Yodeling/Prog Rock Classic

[Bill Hart]

Ken Golden asks me if I have Focus, Moving Waves. "Huh?" He says, you know the song. It's "Hocus Pocus" by Focus, which I heard a million times on the radio back in the '70s. The key to this classic is the yodeling. Killer record, and this track anticipates some of the great Queen stuff, but yodeling? The Blue Horizon from the UK is cheap and efficacious, said Ken, so i grabbed one off the web. Since then, I've been telling everybody, including the church ladies on the streets of Nyack, to listen to this record. Insane.

[Johnny Vinyl]

Focus II or Moving Waves in most countries is indeed a terrific album. I have the Canuck Sire release. The UK Blue Horizon and Dutch Imperial are probably better sounding.

[Alex Siufy]

Don't overlook their later output, incredible stuff. "III" has lots of jamming, and "Hamburger Concerto" is more concise, but very good prog. The mandatory live album from the 70s, "Live at the Rainbow", is also quite good, and show what an incredible guitarrist Jan Akkerman is/was.

[Bill Hart]

Don't overlook their later output, incredible stuff. "III" has lots of jamming, and "Hamburger Concerto" is more concise, but very good prog. The mandatory live album from the 70s, "Live at the Rainbow", is also quite good, and show what an incredible guitarrist Jan Akkerman is/was.

Maar, hebben ze jodelen?

[Johnny Vinyl]

Spreekt U Nederlands? Mooi!

[Bill Hart]

Not even close, Johnny. I cheated. But, my wife is part Dutch. Does that count? (I wanted to say -No, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express. )

[Garth]

Ken Golden asks me if I have Focus, Moving Waves. "Huh?" He says, you know the song. It's "Hocus Pocus" by Focus, which I heard a million times on the radio back in the '70s. The key to this classic is the yodeling. Killer record, and this track anticipates some of the great Queen stuff, but yodeling? The Blue Horizon from the UK is cheap and efficacious, said Ken, so i grabbed one off the web. Since then, I've been telling everybody, including the church ladies on the streets of Nyack, to listen to this record. Insane.

Church Ladies of Nyack and Yodeling I did not think it posable but your life is duller than mine.

[Bill Hart]

Garth- it has been my ambition to achieve this- I don't know if you are familiar with the dialog in Jackie Brown, where Samuel Jackson confronts Bridget Fonda about her sloth, but it is in that spirit.

[Alex Siufy]

Hahaha I'm not dutch, but I guess you don't have to be dutch to appreciate them!

[Rust]

When it first came out it caused much discussion amongst the circles I inhabited due to the yodeling. It was eventually decided that overall it was acceptable since the guitar ripped and they were European so there was no accounting for taste.

[Bill Hart]

When it first came out it caused much discussion amongst the circles I inhabited due to the yodeling. It was eventually decided that overall it was acceptable since the guitar ripped and they were European so there was no accounting for taste.

I remembered it too, but not as something I ever heard on a hi-fi- it was a huge radio hit at the time. Interestingly, though I used to find a lot of European mainstream "pop" banal, those guys certainly had the edge in prog, metal, strange psych/folk/rock and other genres I now enjoy.

[Alex Siufy]

Yeah apparently they were big for a while in the 70s. They even made it into that HBO show, "Vinyl", that was about the record industry in the 70s...