Focus - Hawkley Inn, 21/11/2007

 

A small village deep in the heart of rural Hampshire and probably the last place you would expect to find any live bands playing, let alone one of the great Prog-Rock bands of the 70s. Focus have been coming here for many years now like migrant birds on a stop-over, pausing to give a brief display to the locals before continuing on their journey. The gigs are always low key and unpublicised, relying purely on word-of-mouth advertisement. I received a telephone call from my wife at lunchtime, she had heard through the college grape-vine that the gig was on for tonight and due to start at 8 o’clock. The diary was empty, the sky was clear and the birds would sing.

 

We set off for Hawkley early, not wishing to miss anything and well aware that, like some later day Brigadoon, the village is not the easiest to find as signposts are rare around these parts. For those that don’t know, the village of Hawkley is basically a pub and a church surrounded by a few houses nestling deep in a dark valley, accessible only via steep single-track roads lined with tall forbidding hedgerows that wind down into the valley like magical rabbit burrows entering another world... Tonight the skies had opened and the lanes were awash with torrents of flood waters, the deep wheel-ruts now flowing streams that hid deeper pot-holes that threatened to rip the car’s suspension from its mounts as we bounced and splashed our way deeper into Narnia. A couple of wrong turns later that evidently proved that two wrongs can make a right, and the sight a single festoon of coloured lights decorating the front of a genuine Olde Worlde pub indicated that we had arrived and a long line of parked cars giving a fair indication that it was indeed the right place.

 

No one could call the Hawkley Inn a music venue, it simply does not cater for such things, there is no stage or backstage area, just a series of small connected rooms that circle a small bar area, it’s like putting on a gig in someone’s living room without removing the furniture first. When we arrived the place was half-full, in the corner Thijs van Leer was noodling away on a Hammond while people casually worked around him setting up the other equipment. We propped our selves at the bar and surveyed the wide range of Real Ales on offer, Black Knight taking my fancy this evening, a rich dark bitter that seemed fitting for a night such as this. There appeared to be no rush or urgency here as most were happy to listen to Thijs’s noodlings, which were a little reminiscent of Mrs Rodgers entertaining the congregation at a wedding in our local church when I was younger, except Mrs Rodgers was not prone to random bursts of Scat-singing (more’s the pity), and never used a flute. Once the sound check, (since that was what it was, even though Mr van Leer had kept us entertained for the best part of half an hour), had finished, the band went off for some supper while the bar began to slowly fill-up as people drifted in, bedraggled from the driving rain outside. A disparate mixture of young and old: old Proggers like myself who remember Focus from back in the day, (evident as we overheard snippets of nostalgia dripped conversations); an assortment of bemused village locals who had obviously seen all this before and a collection of curious Metalheads sporting curious beards who seemed equally as excited as we were, but in a more curious way.

 

The set started with something that sounded a little like Sylvia, but wasn’t quite, then moved on to a more recognisable House of the King, which had people smiling and nodding to each other as the groove set in. Now the room filled with people as they filed from the other rooms into this tiny bar area. Any chance of actually seeing Focus play were all but lost, but it sounded fantastic. Tunes flowed into each other without break as Focus led us through a collection of their songs, Round Goes the Gossip and Focus 3, then tunes from later albums such as Focus 8 and 9. The young guitarist, Niels Van der Steenhoven, was not Jan Akerman, but he did justice to Jan’s old tunes and really shone on those of his own. Then Thijs introduced the final song of the set, Eruption from ‘Moving Waves’ in its entirety... Up until then I had never realised how Zeuhl-like Focus could be (not that my knowledge of Zeuhl extends much beyond one album), the erratic highs and lows of the piece stab into the room, prompting (much to my wife’s amusement) the Metalhead’s in the audience to throw devil-horned fists into the air as the band rocked-out. As the piece finished, I looked at the clock, an hour had passed, yet it seemed like only a few minutes. After a short break for more beer, the second set of the evening began. By now successive pints of Black Knight had rendered this hapless review incapable of remembering the song titles and running order, but it does not matter, the music was just awesome and judging by the amount of air keyboards, guitar and drumming going on, it was going down a storm within the crowded confines of the bar. Aya-Yuppie-Hippie-Yee was one that springs to mind while I typo this, as does Sylvia’s Stepson, both from their latest album (okay, I only know that because I bought the CD afterwards), and Brother from Focus 8. Then the unmistakeable sounds of Hocus Pocus, complete with an extended solo by the one and only Pierre van der Linden, quite where Pierre gets so much energy from at this time of night is a mystery, but he is as good now as ever, cue lots of air-drumming and the occasional whoops, whistles and yelps from the audience. 'Anonymus Two' yells someone from the audience, 'Not tonight', laughs Thijs, 'Come see us on tour'

 

After, I spot ex-Enid guitarist Nick May, now of Whimwise, in the audience and I summon the courage to go and introduce myself to him. Whimwise are supporting Focus on this tour, but not are playing tonight as this isn’t a scheduled gig, tonight Nick is here to enjoy the music along with the rest of us...

 

Focus and Whimwise are currently touring the UK. Go see them, you’ll not be disappointed.