Focus's music was hit and miss. The keyboard player, whos name I forget was a bit ecentric with a sense of humor so theres some strange stuff. His vocals were pretty bad too but the musicianship was probably second to none at that time. My buddy bought the album that had Hocus Pocus on it and as I recall that was nearly all that we liked. A few years ago I downloaded some random songs and kept what I liked and deleted others. I forget all the names... let see... Hamburger Concerto is good, Sylvia is good... which might be a movement of Hamburger Concerto. I'll have more time tonight to go through my list and give the names of songs I like, not that I have heard everything. You can read on them on wikipedia for more info.
In 71' Hocus Pocus was state of the art, hardrock, by far blew every and anything else prior to that song out of the water when it comes to early metalesk hardrock for musical integrity, pretty advanced for the times... as was Edgar Winters "Frankenstien". They were educated musicians with insite into classical and jazz. Jan Ackerman may have been the first electric guitar player to apply classical to rock guitar rather than blues. He also shred like no one we had heard yet at that time, somewhat primitive compared to todays "shredders" but he smoked. You can check him out on youtube. Theres footage there of him playing with Paco Delucia and one in recent years as an old man playing some awesome jazz.
Helloween did a great cover of Hocus Pocus, no doubt a tribute to the influence the song had on later metalheads.
I missed the mark when I failed to mention Focus in the art/progressive thread.
