HAMBURGER CONCERTO

I'm sorry, but this is a very overrated album. Focus' best? Oh my god no. I'll take Moving pictures or Focus III or Live At The Rainbow any day before this album. I find Hamburger Concerto is just to predictable, unswinging and conventional rock for my tastes. How is Harem Scarem to be considered prog? It sounds like a straight forward riff oriented rock song with a few jazzy elements thrown in. Boring in other words. I'm afraid pierre Van der Linden's drumming is sorely missed on this one. There are some other nice moments such as in the quieter and quite beautiful La Cathédral De Strasbourg. But for the most this album just doesn't have that extra imaginative something for me to give it a higher rating than two. For instance Birth is filled with solos by Jan Akermann but sound as if they are there to fill up time on what is a fairly weak composition rather than because Akermann was inspired by anything. The lengthy title track mearly plods from one pedestrian section to another with no real direction or energy. Thijs actually reprises his yodelling from Hocus Pocus at one point from what sounds like a total lack of anything new to say if nothing else. That quirkiness and eccentricity that marks Focus earlier works is gone and what's left is a fairly conventional prog rock band. I find myself listening to and enjoying Focus other works much more often. I just don't get it.