If there was a time and a place when progressive rock was at it peak, it would probably have been in England from 1968 through 1972. Those were the years when bands like Pink Floyd, Emerson, Lake and Palmer and Yes sold millions of records and filled thousands of stadium seats.
Shortly before prog-rock’s demise, around 1971, an eccentric, classically-trained organist and flautist from the Netherlands named Thijs van Leer recorded this, his second album with a quartet he formed called Focus. Unlike their first album, which went largely unnoticed, Moving Waves was a huge hit for the band, propelled to #8 on the Billboard album chart behind a shortened version of a song called Hocus Pocus.
Underscored by a melange of flute riffs, accordions, guitars, nonsensical Dutch lyrics and not a little baying and yodeling, Hocus Pocus was one of the weirdest songs to ever hit the American Top 40 this side of Dr. Demento. Most people who have any history of listening to rock music known the song, even if they don’t know the title.
But, for people who bought the album on the strength of that one song, what of the rest of Moving Waves? Taken today, the remaining five cuts ranging — from the 2 minute guitar and strings of Le Clochard (”Bread’) to the broad-sweeping 23 minute suite of songs called Eruption — sound distinctly dated and, for the most part, strangely out of sync with Hocus Pocus.
Though Le Clochard is a pretty enough song that predated New Age by at least 10 years, it can’t escape from sounding today like Will Ackerman fronting a primitive synthesizer. Janis, which features van Leer’s flute stands the test of time a bit better, evoking the best of Blood, Sweat and Tears middle-era work. Moving Waves is simply bad poetry atop flourishing piano while Focus II seems like a song without real direction.
One the flip side, the five-part song cycle Eruption delivers a bit more satisfaction, bringing to mind both Yes and ELP. The drum work Pierre Van der Linden introduces on Hocus Pocus comes into, well, focus midway through the piece. Likewise, at about 6 minutes into the piece, Jan Akkerman is set free to explore a variety of colors ranging from George Benson styled hollow body to Steve Hackett-like electric. Though somewhat disjointed from passage to passage, it’s easy the most interesting piece on the record behind the much vaunted single.
So, was my enthusiasm at finding this nearly pristine copy of Moving Waves for only 99 cents — tucked inside an audiophile inner sleeve — worthy of the music contained therein? Probably not. But certainly as a museum piece, it wasn’t a bad purchase.
BUY-O-METER
LP (99 cents at Goodwill): In nearly perfect condition, it was well worth the money…but not much more.
CD (ranging from 12.99 to 68 bucks for the JVC Japanese version): You have to be really into prog to make that kind of purchase.
DOWNLOAD: Not available.
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