We continue our look back at the music of 50 years ago….
There may have been weirder songs to crack the Top 10 charts in rock music history but I’m having trouble remembering any of them right now. In October of 1971 a Dutch prog-rock band had an unlikely hit. “Hocus Pocus” by Focus went to #9 on the pop charts and the album “Moving Waves” went Top Ten as well.
What made the song so weird? Well, in case you forgot…here it is.
They even did the song live on the Midnight Special…
Yodeling, whistling, scat singing, flute and nonsense gibberish surround by Jan Akkermanns scathing guitar attack. What’s not to love? The song was actually written as a parody and was put on the record as it didnt have any rock music to that point.
The yodeling lead voice, flute and keyboards is Thijs van Leer who helped form the group in the Netherlands in 1969. I particularly like Akkerman’s guitar on this. He was voted best guitarist in the world in 1973 by the readers of British music paper Melody Maker. He later released some really nice solo records that I played at 90 FM quite often…
The rest of the album is fine. Prog rock meets fusion jazz including a more classical piece called Eruption, based on an Italian opera, that takes up all of side 2 . If you were listening to Black Sabbath or Alice Cooper you probably didn’t go for this stuff but when Hocus Pocus came on the radio, I’ll bet you paid attention.
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