elegant simplicity

As everyone probably knows, Jan Akkerman was the guitarist for legendary Dutch Band Focus. Since leaving the band, he has had a pretty prolific recording career and has appeared in concert in the UK many times of late. However, this is the first time I have ever seen him in concert.

The show kicked off around 8.10pm with a rather lengthy rendition of a track called, I think, I'm in the Mood. This was a great intro number: funky, jazzy, rocky and brilliantly demonstrating why the guitarist is held in such high regard. His playing was outstanding. And he got better and better as the show progressed!

His band, (bass, drums, keyboards) were all young fellows and were uniformly excellent, with everyone getting a solo except the keyboardist! Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, too. Jan was a revelation: for some reason I had always thought him a tad grumpy - certainly, interviews I had read had given me that impression. He was the complete opposite, though: entertaining, funny and very personable indeed - almost alike a genial grand-dad!

In between the solo album numbers, came some classic Focus tracks (which I daresay is what everyone was there for!). Kicking off with the marvellous Answers!Questions! we were treated to a dazzling display of guitar prowess that segued into Focus 3 (I think), and quickly followed by a stupendous version of House of the King, played in a laid back manner! Later on we got Hocus Pocus (with Jan supplying the yodelling with his whammy bar - laughing himself silly at the same time!) and then Sylvia. That was it for the Focus numbers.

The highlight, however, was his version of the Paul Weller track You do Something to Me. At first, I was expecting some kind of Shadows thing, but, boy, was I wrong. The song was brilliant. He wrang every possible emotional nuance out of the track and topped it off with another stunner of a solo.

The band came back for a couple of encore numbers, finishing with Slow Man fromhis last solo album and, by 10.30pm, everyone left the theatre grinning merrily away. It was a tremendous show indeed.