THE NICE
Symphonic Prog • United Kingdom
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Founded in London, UK in 1967 - Disbanded in 1970
The NICE was the precursor to one of progs most influential bands - Emerson Lake & Palmer. This band began their career at the dawning of rock and its sub genres, the closing of the sixties and an era of growing desires to challenge the boundaries of popular music. The four musicians branched out, utilizing and combining classical, jazz, blues and rock music to forge a new and dynamic sound - later to be known as Progressive Rock. The seeds were already sown for the Symphonic and Orchestral style of music that Keith EMERSON would champion throughout the decades to come.
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THE NICE discography
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THE NICE top albums (CD, LP, MC, SACD, DVD-A, Digital Media Download)
3.45 | 168 ratings
The Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjack 1967 |
3.21 | 150 ratings
Ars Longa Vita Brevis 1968 |
3.26 | 111 ratings
Nice [Aka: Everything As Nice As Mother Makes It] 1969 |
3.01 | 108 ratings
Elegy 1971 |
THE NICE Live Albums (CD, LP, MC, SACD, DVD-A, Digital Media Download)
3.48 | 126 ratings
Five Bridges Suite 1970 |
2.50 | 5 ratings
BBC Sessions: America 1996 |
3.96 | 8 ratings
The Swedish Radio Sessions 2002 |
4.00 | 4 ratings
BBC Sessions 2002 |
3.49 | 16 ratings
Keith Emerson And The Nice: Vivacitas 2003 |
4.08 | 17 ratings
The Nice Live at Fillmore East 2009 |
4.64 | 5 ratings
Diamond Hard Blue Apples Of The Moon 2010 |
THE NICE Videos (DVD, Blu-ray, VHS etc)
THE NICE Boxset & Compilations (CD, LP, MC, SACD, DVD-A, Digital Media Download)
THE NICE Official Singles, EPs, Fan Club & Promo (CD, EP/LP, MC, Digital Media Download)
4.00 | 2 ratings
The Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjack (Single) 1967 |
0.00 | 0 ratings
Brandenburger 1968 |
3.13 | 4 ratings
America (2nd Amendment) 1968 |
0.00 | 0 ratings
Hang On To A Dream 1969 |
0.00 | 0 ratings
Country Pie / Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 1970 |
0.00 | 0 ratings
Country Pie - Brandenburg Concerto #6 1970 |
0.00 | 0 ratings
America / Rondo 1978 |
0.00 | 0 ratings
America / Hang On To A Dream 1981 |
THE NICE Reviews
Showing last 10 reviews only
The Nice Symphonic Prog
Review by
Warthur
Prog Reviewer
This became all the more obvious when O'List - the second most promising talent in the group - left. Ars Longa Vita Brevis, the first album in the trio format, consists of some half-assed joke songs, a classical interpretation, and the side- long title track, and perhaps the kindest thing that could be said about it is that it brought a lot of fresh new ideas to the table but didn't execute them brilliantly, and that it would take other bands - including Emerson's next project, ELP - to actually take that rough blueprint, cast aside the bits which weren't working, and tighten up the bits with potential.
But hey - it was a transitional album. You can be forgiven one of those when your band's had a setback. At some point, however, your band needs to complete that transition and actually pull together, or your project isn't long for this world.
Which brings me to the subject of this review: Nice, the third album by the group and the actual subject of this review. (Don't worry, gang, there's a reason I recapped the last two albums above.) Taken by itself, this may come across as an alright but not great slice of proto-symphonic prog from early in the genre's existence - with a decent keyboardist, vocals which are a bit middling, and a major burden in terms of the production.
Production was a bit of a problem with all three albums that the Nice made for Immediate, who I can only conclude simply cheaped out when it came to the recording process. (They were cash-strapped at the time, and by the next year had gone bankrupt.) There's a couple of live tracks on here - taking up the entirety of the second side on vinyl - and one suspects that one reason for their conclusion was a realisation that the live recordings sounded better than the studio tracks, where the production job is simply a touch too thin to do the material justice.
It will also not escape the attention of the listener enjoying this in isolation that a chunk of this material consists of cover versions. Of course, they're Nice-ified cover versions, but by this point in the 1960s did we really, truly need yet another band padding out their set with Bob Dylan covers? Especially Bob Dylan covers which consist of a snippet of a Bob Dylan song and then lots of additional improvisations and flourishes? You don't even need to dig into the history of the band to get the sense that there's a songwriting shortfall here.
But let's widen our lens and take in the band's back catalogue now. The debut album was right on the cutting edge of what would become known as progressive rock, brought a swathe of fresh ideas to the table, and had a rough and ready approach to it which made it possible to forgive the production shortcomings. The second album had its production difficulties and might have leaned a little too hard on novelty numbers on its first side, and its second side epic proves that there's a difference between "groundbreaking" and "good", but there was at least a sense that new ideas were being brought to the table; an effort is clearly being made even if the results aren't what they could be.
Here, though, we have cover versions, we have rehashes of material that the Nice had already put out (Azrael and Rondo), and that's kind of it. There's no sense of forward momentum here; if anything, the band seem to have regressed a bit compared to the ambitions of Ars Longa Vita Brevis, and if you're a prog listener you'd probably rather listen to an ambitious work which fumbled than an unambitious work which aimed for "satisfactory" and just about made the cut.
Widen the lens further, and let's look at what other bands are doing in 1969. The Moody Blues, who put out their first proto-symphonic album in the same year as the Nice's debut, will out out not one but two albums this year - On the Threshold of a Dream and To Our Children's Children's Children. Not only could either of those releases absolutely wipe the floor with this album without breaking much of a sweat, but both albums find the band advancing their style, as has the intervening In Search of the Lost Chord. Meanwhile, an upstart group called King Crimson is unleashing a debut album on the world which will be an utterly transformative work in the genre of progressive work, a quantum leap building on the efforts of predecessors - including the Nice - but reaching wholly new territory hitherto untouched. I could talk here about the 1968-1969 accomplishments of groups the Nice had toured with back in 1967 such as the Jimi Hendrix Experience or Pink Floyd, but that would be beating a dead horse.
The idea that Nice could possibly stand out in a musical scene which was experiencing the Big Bang moment which was In the Court of the Crimson King is, in retrospect, laughable. But even at the time, it should surely have been obvious that the Nice just weren't keeping up with their peers. Acts which had emerged at the same time they did had outpaced them in terms of subsequent musical development. Brand new bands were emerging which left the Nice looking like old-fashioned anachronisms within a mere two years after The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack put them at the spearhead of the movement.
It might have been harsh of Keith Emerson to have expressed the view, towards the end of 1969, that the Nice had outlived its usefulness - but I defy anyone to listen to this album and tell me that the Nice were thriving. The fact is that after a debut which was both historically important to the genre genuinely good, and a second album which was far less consistent but at least still originated some important prog ideas, their self-titled album fails on all measures. It's not a well-produced and tightly written 43 minutes of music on its own terms, it's far from the best album in the Nice discography, and whilst the previous two albums were key moments in prog history (even if, to my taste, only the debut remains satisfying to listen to), the only historical value this one has is that it demonstrates why the band had to end.
This had a brief surge of commercial success when it first came out, but its comparative obscurity next to In the Court of the Crimson King, the two Moody Blues releases of 1969, Electric Ladyland - or freakin' UMMAGUMMA, for crying out loud! - is the surest proof that it simply lacked staying power. And that was pretty much that for the Nice. Sure, a couple of posthumous releases - Five Bridges and Elegy - crept out after the fact. But hailing from late 1969 and cobbled together from live shows, they hail from a point in time when the writing was already on the wall, Emerson was already looking at putting together a supergroup (a big chunk of the early drive behind Emerson, Lake & Palmer seems to have been "Let's do trio-era Nice, but make it WORK this time!"), and the slide towards oblivion was too late to halt. They crawled into early 1970, but by that point were continuing out of politeness rather than passion, seeing out their last few dates before walking away for good.
The Nice Symphonic Prog
Review by
Warthur
Prog Reviewer
Meatier fare comes in with the classically-inspired pieces, with an interpretation of the Intermezzo from the Karelia Suite whetting our appetites for the side-long title track, which along with Procol Harum's In Held 'Twas In I marked the beginning of a prog tradition. Annoyingly, it also incorporates the misguided rock tradition of an overlong drum solo - Brian Davidson seems a capable enough sort, but a lot of these things end up being deeply tedious and same-y and he's not one of the few drummers who can break out of that rut.
Then again, the lacklustre nature of the rest of the suite suggests that the band were short on ideas at this stage. Tarkus this ain't - hell, it isn't even Karn Evil 9, a piece which is intensely goofy but is at least well-produced and packed with memorable moments. By comparison, this suffers from a lacklustre production and a somewhat muddled performance. Keith Emerson was clearly developing his talent by leaps and bounds at this point in time, but the rest of the band just don't seem to have been keeping pace, and the result is this. Historically significant to the genre's development, but unlike the Procol Harum piece not really compelling to revisit.
The Nice Symphonic Prog
Review by
Warthur
Prog Reviewer
Still, the Nice understood one thing very well indeed: if some of your band members lack polish in terms of technical intricacy, make up for it with volume. This is a proto-symphonic prog assault on the ears; whilst in the same year landmark albums from Procol Harum and the Moody Blues demonstrated how classical influences could soften and broaden the emotional palette of rock music by opening the door to gentler musical territory, this album proved without a doubt that classical music can rock, with Keith Emerson's dizzying ability to string together a wide range of classical motifs and his own compositional touches into a fresh new whole being the standout feature of the album.
It would take ELP to take the artistic vision glimpsed here to its full potential - but it took the Nice to enunciate it in the first place. It's not an immediate classic on the level of In the Court of the Crimson King, but it is a foundational album of the genre which is still a highly entertaining listen in its own right, and some may prefer its more raucous and rough around the edges style to the somewhat more mannered realms of ELP.
The Nice Symphonic Prog
Review by
DangHeck
Prog Reviewer
Initially feeling justified in my feelings of them as Proto-Prog, "Azrael Revisited" is our opener, with this very specific, warm tone from the keys and Lee Jackson's gruff vocal delivery. What's cool to me especially though is that something that sounds like this can live in the '60s at all. This perhaps pseudo-acoustic piano tone is something that Keith Emerson would continue to develop later on with his Wild West-inspired ragtime material (a feature of most ELP albums). To me, the ultimate submission in this era-, genre-, and Emerson-specific arena is "The Sheriff". And when comparing to that or "Jeremy Bender", our opener here is honestly far less interesting or gripping. The fade to black, at least, was a nice touch. This is then followed by a looking-forward to Trilogy, "Hang On to a Dream", a piano ballad with most delicate vocals from Mr. Jackson, backed by really beautiful, chamber(?) vocals. Light, jingly percussion and a bouncing bass come in around the midpoint, during a surely-acoustic piano solo. Ultimately, despite its far-flung strengths, "Hang On" is bordering on "Collectors/fans only" to my ears.
We then get a track I was quite excited for, "Diary of an Empty Day", our last regular ol' song-length tune before three mini-epics. The composition swirls about with more light, though cymbal-heavy drums and bouncing bass guitar, as Emerson fugues about on Hammond. The flamenco-esque acoustic guitar by the end was a real treat, too! And onto that first 'mini', the nearly 9-minute "For Example" greatly resembled, in part, Tarkus to come. I'm realizing I've not mentioned drummer Brian Davidson, but honestly, even when he's free-wheelin' as he is here, I feel he just gets lost in the mix, so to speak. I don't find myself thinking, 'Oh wow, that drum fill was cool' or whatever... Is what it is. Props then to Carl Palmer, amirite? Closest we get thus far is after minute 2, with this slack, rolling bashing he gives the kit, but then I also recognize for the second time (at least) how weirdly lo-fi the actual mix is. It's very muddy. What you might as well expect from 'truly' live-recorded material, which we're just coming to, but... Yeah... Very familiar Hammond figures can be found in the middle. One thing I hope is in fact Davidson is the lovely vibes we get the privilege to hear in the straight-ahead Jazz explosion we're gifted near the end. Delightful. And of course I would get excited about a "Norwegian Wood" reference haha.
The final two tracks are recorded live at Fillmore East, the first being "Rondo '69" [Nice.], a partial cover of the Dave Brubeck Quartet classic "Blue Rondo a la Turk" off their beloved Time Out, interestingly released 10 years before this (1959)! I wanted to give it a listen here, taking a pause, and, frankly, this is progressive [Proto-Prog?!] music assuredly! And this is the same sentimental nature (for what came before) and ambition (in order to truly look ahead) that I believe was shared by Keith Emerson. I'm not surprised, really, but were The Nice that much better live?! Intro alone, they sound fantastic (even Mr. Davidson haha). Anyhow, "Rondo" was first released by The Nice on their '67 debut, The Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjack (been a while, admittedly). And finally, we have an interesting cover of Bob Dylan's "She Belongs to Me", originally released on his Folk Rock classic album Bringing It All Back Home (1965). The keyboards are most reminiscent to Dave Stewart's performances off of the most contemporary Arzachel. But also sounds a bit like Rick Wakeman early on in his time with Yes? Awesome, memorable riffs here. Very enjoyable; how I think long and drawn out should go. I'm sure it was a blast to have seen live. And it should really be mentioned just how unlike the original this is.
[I guess it is nice to see your feelings about an album shared, at least given overall ratings, by the largest group of reviewers; if that makes sense.]
True Rate: 3.75/5.00
The Nice Symphonic Prog
Review by NmDPlm
The Nice Symphonic Prog
Review by
Mirakaze
Special Collaborator Eclectic Prog & JR/F/Canterbury Teams
The Nice Symphonic Prog
Review by Prog123
The problem with some compilations is that they are produced by labels that specialize in compilations and are in the catalog for a short time. And, sometimes, the problem is that these labels are ephemeral (or a little more). Moreover with The Nice it is easy to build a compilation that is the definitive album. This is for me this compilation. I will not describe every song as I never do this by reviewing a compilation. I will talk about the style, a sort of very powerful and symphonic Rock, sometimes with heavy (and badly aged) arrangements and sometimes still fresh and engaging as at the end of the 60s. In fact it should be noted that The Nice was a poorly produced band (other albums sounded much better at the time) and this was also due to the fact that the musicians (Keith Emerson aside) seem to be a bit forced to play music which they fail to make it look totally natural (but it wasn't that obvious at the time). And at the time The Nice was much more evolved than similar bands, which still managed to mix all the elements in one solution.
"The Best Of The Nice" has become an extremely rare compilation today. But, given the songs included in it, it's not wrong to call it a sort of definitive The Nice album.
The Nice Symphonic Prog
Review by
SouthSideoftheSky
Special Collaborator Symphonic Team
The group's third full-length release - simply called "Nice" - is a half studio, half live album. The studio side starts with Azrael Revisited, which is a re-make of Azrael (Angel Of Death) which was the b-side on the group's first single from a couple of years earlier. Next up is Hang On To A Dream, written by Tim Hardin. This is a very nice song with great piano work by Emerson. Sadly the vocals of Lee Jackson don't work as well. In the 1990's, Emerson re-recorded the song with Greg Lake and Carl Palmer for the ELP box set Return of the Manticore, and comparing Lee's vocals with those of Lake, the limitations of the former becomes painfully clear. Still, this tracks is definitely the highlight of Nice, with the wonderful jazzy middle-section being especially noteworthy.
The studio side continues with Diary Of An Empty Day and For Example. Both are decent songs, but the lyrics are weak. Phrases like "I can't think of words to this music, no reason or rhyme to abuse it" and "I can't think what to say, my head's a blank today" indicates that inspiration was running low in the lyrics department.
The live side holds two tracks, the first of which is a rendition of Rondo entitled "Rondo '69" to distinguish it from the studio version that already had appeared on the band's 1967 debut album. The other live track is a cover of the Bob Dylan song She Belongs To Me running more than 12 minutes. Both live tracks were recorded at The Fillmore East in New York City.
Overall, I find this album more enjoyable than the first two. But the half studio, half live nature and the heavy reliance on covers and re-makes precludes a higher rating.
The Nice Symphonic Prog
Review by
SouthSideoftheSky
Special Collaborator Symphonic Team
With Davy O'List having exited the group after their first album, the trio format that Keith Emerson would later carry on so successfully with Emerson Lake & Palmer was established. The Nice's second album Ars Longa Vita Brevis is a bit incoherent with the first three songs being very much in the same Psychedelic style that had dominated the debut while the second half of the album being a group-meets-orchestra exercise that might be categorized as "Proto-Prog". Surely an adventurous thing to do, and possibly influential on other bands, but the side-long, multi-part composition lacks direction and the orchestra adds little of value to the proceedings in my opinion.
By far the most interesting, and for me the only really enjoyable, track here for me is Intermezzo from Karelia Suite. Again an adaption of a classical piece, like Rondo from the debut, this time by Finish composer Jean Sibelius. Like Rondo before it, Intermezzo pointed towards what Emerson would go on to do with ELP, and works well here.
The Nice Symphonic Prog
Review by
SouthSideoftheSky
Special Collaborator Symphonic Team
America was adapted from West Side Story and was recorded by The Nice for a single release in 1968. This rocking rendition did not appear on any of the group's full length albums (it has however been included among the bonus tracks of CD re-issues of The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack, and on some live albums), and in my opinion is far more exciting than any of the material from their albums. I love this high energy instrumental that became one of The Nice's most well-known numbers, and the recording clearly points towards what Emerson would go on to do with ELP on Hoedown and Fanfare for the Common Man for example.
The US version of this single held an edited version of only 3:55, but the European versions were over six minutes. The b-side is The Diamond Hard Blue Apples of the Moon, another non-album track. Unlike the a-side, this one is a The Nice original written by Davison and Jackson, and featuring vocals.