Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Location: Piazza Unita d'Italia / Trieste / Italy
Concert date: 30.07.2010
Attendance: 1500
Ticket price: free admission
Trieste’s main square, Piazza dell’ Unita, hosts a free summer festival every year as a matter of tradition, with all kinds of progressive rock legends who otherwise only rarely wander anywhere near us. So this is one of the few chances for fans of legendary bands that stayed devoted to experimental forms of rock music for most of their careers to get their fix without having to trek up to northern Germany or over to Great Britain. Last year Gong and Van Der Graaf Generator paid us a visit, and this year the festival ran for a full three days, serving up top-notch shows from three world-famous prog rock acts: Focus, The Grande Mother Of Re:Invention and Steve Hackett Band.
The first day of the Trieste summer rock festival was a real treat for all fans of symphonic prog rock, as the legendary Dutch prog champions Focus took over the main square. Led by the indestructible, ultra-charismatic organist, flutist and singer/yodeler Thijs van Leer, they’re celebrating more than forty years in the game and can boast four first-rate prog rock albums from the early seventies, the ones that built their reputation. In recent years, after getting back together, they’ve been gigging actively again and putting out new studio albums. It doesn’t happen all that often that Focus land this close to our border, since they mostly play in the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic north-west, so their show pulled in a gratifyingly big crowd of curious folks hungry for quality prog rock.
Besides the big boss van Leer, the current incarnation of the band also features longtime drummer Pierre van der Linden, who helps keep the continuity going, while guitarist Niels van der Steenhoven and bassist Bobby Jacobs are proper youngsters next to those two. Despite the considerable age gap, both kept up with the seasoned old cats more than successfully throughout the show. Wearing a hat and a cloak that reached down to the floor, Van Leer used every instrumental gadget imaginable between songs, including a horn and a special plastic whistle, and at one point he was even swinging around something that most closely resembled a rosary. Even when he had to stop to wet his whistle with some water, he had no trouble playing the organ with one hand. Between numbers the charismatic organist kept coaxing out witty vocal improvisations, backed up by colorful vocal grimaces. Van der Linden proved with his temperamental pounding of the drum kit that he’s still in excellent drumming form and he really shone during the shorter fusion-style improvisations.
For many in attendance, the high point of the show was the performance of the more-than-twenty-minute super-epic “Eruption” from the legendary album “Moving Waves” (1971), which they played in almost its full length. With “La Cathedrale de Strasbourg”, “Answers? Questions! Questions? Answers!” and “Harem Scarem” they convincingly served up some seriously tasty prog rock delicacies, packed with all sorts of jazzy improvisations. All three parts of “Focus” were played with exceptional feel and finesse, and that went for most of the performances that night. Of course they didn’t forget the obligatory hits either, like “Sylvia” and the no less legendary single “House of the King”, which served as a kind of warm-up for the big finale.
Of the newer material, meaning the last two albums “Focus 8” and “Focus 9”, the excellent renditions of “Neurotika” and “Aya-Yuppie-Hippie-Yee” stood out. Before the end of the main set, it was finally time for their biggest hit “Hocus Pocus”, the one most of the crowd had been waiting for most impatiently. The yodeling orgy, which sent the whole crowd into mass ecstasy, had barely died down when they played the excellent “Brother” as an encore and sealed the deal: they’re in superb form right now. After more than two hours of phenomenal show, backed by a really nicely done sound mix, they left the stage to thunderous ovations from the audience. After the gig, every band member was available to anyone for handshakes and autographs. The absence of legendary guitarist and band co-founder Jan Akkerman was the only thing many longtime fans missed that evening, but alas, he and van Leer are reportedly still bitterly at odds, so the chances of the two ever sharing a stage again are very slim. Not even the bora, which blew relentlessly off the sea that night and even knocked over a few chairs in the back rows, could spoil the Dutch legends’ excellent show.
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
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