Hocus Pocus

Ôi orôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi ohrorô poPÔYôi orôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi rôrôrôi ohrorô,
BoumPÔ,
Aaaah aaah aaah aaahUuuh oooh oooh ooooooooh


"Hocus Pocus" - Focus





Yes, yes I did just google those lyrics, and copy and paste them, because I feel like I should always use song lyrics at the top of my blog entries nowadays.


I also saw someone on songmeanings.net comment on the meaning of the song.


They said; "I think this song holds the secret as to the real meaning of life. "





Last Tuesday morning, my dad came into my room and told me that the night before that he'd been to a Focus show in Wolverhampton, the night before. After the show, Thijs van Leer, the lead singer, had been walking round the small club the gig was held at afterwards.


I've known some of Focus' music since I was very young: I have a distinct memory of being in my dad's car at around eight years old, listening to the song Hocus Pocus. There's a part where the frontman introduces all of the band, they're Dutch and I misheard all of their names. "On the bass guitar, Bobby Chelcoms... And on the drums, Betchy Smark. Peter Yann-Doo-May." But


I never misheard, "On organ, and flute, Thijs van Leer".


I imagined this flute playing, yodelling organ-ist (That's a word?) to look like a wizard.





I hadn't thought about them for a long time until Tuesday when my dad told me the story; he'd met Thijs van Leer, now frail and old, about sheet music for Le Cathedral de Strausberg. And he'd said that he had it in his hotel room, and my dad went back with him and talked about Jan Akkerman and music and my dad seemed fairly mind-blown. He gave him his personal email address and he'd said he'd remember him, because his name was Robin, also the name of the club he'd performed at. I get excited over small claims to fame, yes.





On Thursday, we went to their gig in Manchester, with my dad's friend he'd seen them with on the Monday. I haven't seen Stuart or his daughter Nicole for a long time, but we went skiing with them when I was about nine. Since then, Stuart split up with his wife. His current girlfriend, Rachel, came with us too.


We were mostly silent in the car. It's always strange when you see someone you were really close too as a kid. I recently saw my parents' friends' son for the first time in a long time, and he is eighteen now and going to university. I spent an entire night with when I was eight thinking he was awesome because he introduced me to Runescape, and typed "penis" into Google Images.


Nicole is two years younger than me, and I think we were pretty good friends when we went skiing. I don't remember much about her, so I don't know if she's changed a lot except that she was Older. She wore hoop earrings and looked bored, was constantly texting and wore a pouty bored expression. One of the things that made me laugh a lot was listening to her talking to her dad about walking home from school and having to go through an alley which, she declared in a matter-of-fact tone, "I can't go through, because it's haunted."





I could go on to further describe all of the other people there, but I won't because it isn't going to matter.


The support act were pretty good. Band On The Wall is a small club, and we went into the basement and met two of my dad's friends from high school. He hadn't seem them for twenty years until a week ago, and they seemed oddly comfortable around each other and I'm not sure how I feel about that, or how I'd feel if I met my friends from school after twenty years apart. I was amazed because they were a whole new breed of person I haven't come across before in the real world: the kind that go to gigs all of the time, one of them had seen Sting three times a week recently. And knew who Imogen Heap was.
The stereotypical audience member was a man, 45-ish, slightly long hair and a baggy black t-shirt. Perhaps he was alone.




Thijs van Leer came on stage, stood aside and the rest of the band led on.


He looked like a wizard.


I liked the concert a lot more than I thought; I was skeptical and maybe thought I couldn't enjoy music as much simply because it was instrumental, I was very wrong. They played the song my dad requested: Le Cathedral de Strausberg and it was pretty and sounded like bells. Another highlight was Focus III (I think) was the first song they played, I didn't know it but it was brilliant, and my favourites were the ones I knew, Sylvia and Hocus Pocus. Thijs van Leer held his arms wide open and the audience sang.



"Yodeadodoyodeadodoyodeadodoyodeadodoyodeadodoyodeadodoyo-bab-baaaaa

Ahhhhhh-aaahhhh-aaaaaa-aaaaAAA!Ohhhhhh-ooohhh-oooooo-oooOOO!"

does not seem to describe the beauty and epicness of it, but there is sometimes no way to write music down.



Pocus was the last song they did and afterwards, we hung out at the merch table. My dad bought a shirt and we met all of the band and it was surreal because I wasn't ready to translate what I'd seen on the stage to actual human beings yet. Maybe instead, they were some of the first famous people, if you can call them that, people I've met and I was surprised at how human everyone was acting.

On the way home there was a bit of a fight with Stuart and his girlfriend, because he wanted to stop for kebabs and he was tired, and I went home and ate a slice of bread and it tasted like the best food in the world.

Lizzie