1. Focus "Moving Waves"
I blew the dust off my vinyl copy and remastered it digitally...and was instantly reminded of the reason why I ignored all of the leading English bands like Yes, ELP etc. in favour of Focus, Golden Earring (a criminally under-rated band at the time), American country-rock and jazz. "Moving Waves" was the second Focus album, and the only one made with the quartet of Jan Akkerman, Thijs Van Leer, Pierre Van Der Linden and Cyril Havermans. Shortly after this album was released, Havermans was replaced by Bert Ruiter, and this changed the sound of the band (see below).
"Moving Waves" leads off with the tune that is probably still the Focus signature tune, "Hocus Pocus", which commences with a searing riff by Akkerman, and then drops into a series of driving variations built around Akkerman's guitar riff. In between the re-capitulations of the riff pattern, Pierre Van Der Linden inserts inventive drum fills followed by alternate statements of a theme sung in (impressive) falsetto and elaborations on the theme using whistling, vocalese and flutes. Just over 6 minutes later the whole ride comes to an end. Even thirty-five years or so later, this is still a brilliantly executed piece of music, and you can still pick out subtleties even now, my favorite being Van Der Linden's drag-to-the-off-beat drum pattern mid-way through the first statement of the riff theme; initially it sounds like he fell asleep, but then it becomes an essential part of the whole rhythmic variation base of the tune.
The worst track is the title track "Moving Waves", which features some truly awful lyrics fitted to a melody line which does not seem to work with lyrics.
"Eruption" takes up the whole of the second side of the LP (oops showing my age there...). Once again it is a beautifully-constructed piece of music, featuring endless inventions on several different themes. The highlight is a frenzied Akkerman guitar passage where he ends by quoting from the "Hocus Pocus" riff again.

2. Focus - "Focus III"
After "Moving Waves", Cyril Havermans left the band, and was replaced on bass by Bert Ruiter. This significantly altered the band's sound; Havermans was a lower-register bass player with an almost bottomless bass sound (heard to good effect all the way through "Moving Waves"). Ruiter played with a pick and had a more mid-range tone, plus he tended to play in higher registers. As a result, the band's sound on "Focus III" lacked the bottom end depth, with the bottom end of the band's sound increasingly being defined by Van Leer's Hammond organ instead of the bass. On the upside, Ruiter's bass took a more prominent melodic role, particularly on "Answers? Questions? Questions? Answers" which follows on from "Focus III" in the middle of the album. This track is the highlight. Akkerman plays some beautiful guitar parts both in an accompaniment and lead role, with the middle of the tune anchored by a long flute solo from Van Leer and a gradual build to a guitar-led climax.
After the tight cohesion of "Moving Waves", "Focus III" feels somewhat more of a sprawl, especially "Anonymus II" which lasts for nearly 30 minutes and originally covered one and a half sides of the vinyl version. This tune drags in parts, and could probably have been tightened down.

3. Focus - "Hamburger Concerto"
After "Focus III", and the subsequent tour, Pierre Van Der Linden left the band and was replaced by Colin Allen. This once again modified the band's base dynamics and sound, since Allen was a rock drummer, whereas Van Der Linden was a jazz drummer operating in a highly eclectic context. The recruitment of Allen was supposedly partially due to record company pressure to simplify the band's sound to keep a more rock audience i.e. the folks who bought records, which if true, made the idea dumb from the start.
"Hamburger Concerto" was recorded at Olympic Studios in Barnes, London (with Thijs Van Leer even sneaking out to play some organ parts on a local church organ). The band sound for this recording was more dense and multi-layered, with Van Leer using synthesizers for the first time, but also making more extensive use of piano. On prior recordings the piano was used for occasional colour; here on this album it is an integral part of the band sound. Also present are numerous percussion overdubs by Colin Allen (tympani, congas, cymbals, triangles etc.). The resulting sound is more dense and multi-layered.
Allen was a more straight-ahead rock drummer than Van der Linden, a fact that becomes obvious on the single "Harem Scarem", where his driving backbeat anchors the main theme played by Van Leer on grand piano. Indeed, the main melodic pattern is played in a New Orleans boogie-woogie piano style. "Harem Scarem" is dominated by Van Leer's piano, keyboards, flute and voices, and Jan Akkerman is reduced to a few rhythmic fills, a single lead phrase in the tune's bridge (repeated as the band plays the entire tune form twice), and a rather desultory solo section where he plays nothing of any interest.
Other evidence of Akkerman's disengagement is audible on other tracks, where his playing seems largely devoid of passion and interest, with only occasional bursts of inspiration. The overall feel of the album is that the band was becoming increasingly dominated by Van Leer, both compositionally and playing-wise.
Side two of the album is the suite "Hamburger Concerto", an attempt at a long-form suite in the style of "Eruption", but much less successful. Here, there seems to be a lot of elaborations by way of key changes and repetitions of phrases, and the overall feeling is that the melodic content was being spread too thinly.
After "Hamburger Concerto" the band would rapidly decline and ultimately disintegrate in 1977, after a series of setbacks, the most notable being the departure of Akkerman, and the most bizarre being the link-up with the singer P.J. Proby for the album "Focus con Proby".

4. J.J. Cale - Anyway The Wind Blows
In 1976 my best friend obtained an LP by somebody who I at first took to be John Cale (he of Velvet Underground fame). D'oh! I was swiftly corrected, and we settled down to listen to music quite unlike what we had previously listened to. From the speakers emerged a collection of stripped-down 3 minute songs, played precisely and with swing, many of them derived from 12 bar patterns, but often with different instrumentation to the norm (Cale used beat boxes a lot on his early albums to create a hypnotic backbeat for some songs, as on "Anyway The Wind Blows"). Over the top JJ Cale sang multi-tracked vocals which, often sung in a part-whisper, made it sound like he was speaking to you as the song unfolded. Add into the mix his own understated guitar, and here was a unique, laid-back but warm and deeply authentic sound.
The JJ Cale sound was painstakingly assembled in the studio; aside from the multi-tracked vocals (which to this day cannot be reproduced live, making Cale's live vocals a poor reflection of his recorded voice), Cale spent a lot of time recording guitar parts. I found out many years later that the guitar riff for "Cocaine" was actually recorded using four guitar parts each playing one note. This results in a completely different sound to the normal sound when one plays (or even picks) the notes of the riff simultaneously on one guitar.
Cale's fame spread primarily via other artists recording his songs, and it was not until 1977 that he toured the UK, where he apparently spent a significant part of his debut London concert hiding behind the amplifiers, after he realized that the audience included Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. To this day he remains an unassuming, shy person who just sits on a stool, sings and plays understated but beautifully tasteful guitar. On the recent "Crossroads" DVD, he remarked that when he started playing, it was expected that you would "get a day job" after 30, and he felt very lucky to still be playing and touring at 65.
This compilation contains nearly every one of his great compositions, and shows that being definably different takes time and effort, but ultimately beats sounding like every other musician from the heartland of America.