The aged live, and the young(ish) pretender

If you'd told me at the beginning of the year that two of the best concerts I'd go to would be from artists who started in the late 1960s, I'd have called you an idiot.

However if you had said that, I'd now owe you an apology.

A month ago I saw Jethro Tull/Ian Anderson touring Thick as a Brick 2, which is all sorts of excellent. In fact it's got that highly annoying problem of good Tull albums that it seeps under the skin and you find yourself reaching for it time and time again.

Last night I went to see Focus at the Musician in Leicester. I went in only knowing that one track, and was blown away by a masterclass in jazz-rock-metal. Yes I suppose you could call it prog, but I'm not sure that really explains them, there's far more jazz in there than most prog, although the hardrock/metal bits fit well within the prog-metal genre.
Led by the hammond organ / flutist Thijs van Leer the band is very tight, and rocks hard. It's quite hard to describe their style, since it's all over the place - without being annoyingly so. Everything seems very organic, the sign of a good band, and the musicianship is great. The guitarist, Menno, in particular, was cranking of disgustingly good solos - and without the histronics of some guitarists - win! I liked the lack of vocals (in a classical sense), made for an interesting change.
Really pleased I went, and I they've got a new album out soon - I picked up a live in europe CD, which I was going to link to from their website, but its pretty crap selection. And I can't find it on amazon.

Focus are doing a reasonably extensive UK tour at the moment - definitely worth going.

Last week I went down to London for the Steven Wilson gig. I'll admit, I love the new album (grace for drowning) but this gig. Bloody hell. Definitely something else. And likely to hit best gig of the year. I also have utmost respect for SW for dumping Porcupine Tree after their most successful album and releasing something completely different and utterly engaging. Even non-prog people are liking this - i've inflicted it on a number of people now and the odd combination of very tune based, jazz, pop, rock seems a winner.

B