My Top 2000 Songs #1018: Hocus Pocus

Ah, the seventies. Where would we have been without those amazing low-budget K-Tel collections, heavily advertised on tv, compiling haphazard mixes of Top 40 hits and (distant) misses, songs both great (ish?) and terrible (mostly).

They were a great way for kids like me to pick up some tunes without blowing our entire allowance. I remember this one record, 1973's Fantastic (22 Original Hits! 22 Original Stars!) (which was a little misleading, as there were two Elton John tracks and thus only 21 Original Stars, but whatever). My buddy down the block had a copy, and it was packed with some cool songs. It was my first exposure to Sweet's "Little Willy" (having gotten into the band through the later "Fox On The Run"); there were those 2 Elton songs ("Rocket Man," "Crocodile Rock"), though I wasn't much of an Elton fan; some classic 70s schlock like Vicki Lawrence's "The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia"; and a lot of long-forgotten dreck.

But mostly it had "Hocus Pocus" by Focus. Damn, what a song! One of the greatest guitar riffs in rock & roll... plus yodeling. Probably the only yodeling on a rock song, or at least I'd hope so, but it was perfect here, just adding to that early 70s weirdness.

I didn't dig any further into Focus until decades later. Turns out they were a Dutch prog band, and most of their early stuff was much more sedate, on the classical side of the prog ledger. Their second album, 1971's Making Waves (or Focus II in the Netherlands), is decent enough, with plenty of proggy touchstones: several shorter, mostly instrumental pieces drawn from classical music and jazz; plus an LP-side-long suite called "Eruption" which meanders from medieval folk to hard rock, cheesy organ riffs and drum solos, etc. 

But the main attraction is the "Hocus Pocus" LP opener, which sounds nothing like anything else on the album. And it still kicks ass all over the place. (Just check out its amazing deployment in Baby Driver a few years ago, one of the most exciting needle drops in cinematic history!)

Full length album version:

Abridged single version:

Live on Midnight Special, amped up to double-speed:

As seen in Baby Driver:

Marillion cover:

Vanessa Mae fiddle version:

Punked up with The Vandals: