Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Artist: Nice, The
Label: Immediate Records
Released: 1969
Running time: 43:46
Rating: 3.5/5
Prog rock pioneers The Nice were, in the late sixties, among the leading lights of a new musical movement that smashed through the genre walls between rock, jazz, blues and classical music, and they also became one of the first bands to pull off a collaboration with an orchestra. Led by the tireless keyboard wizard Keith Emerson (later of Emerson, Lake & Palmer), they looked like they had a bright future ahead of them, but reality, especially when it came to equality among the band members, was a bit different. By the time they put out their third album, released in the UK and Europe as »Nice« and in the US as »Everything As Nice As The Mother Makes It«, you could already tell that The Nice trio wasn’t going to last much longer.
Virtuoso Emerson was then, alongside Jon Lord (Deep Purple), without a doubt the most fascinating and flashy keyboardist in rock, and he seemed to know no limits in his adventurous adaptations of classical music and in his hot-handed attacks on his keyboard kingdom. The keyboard maestro was developing at lightning speed, not just as a top-class player but also as a composer, with some downright crazy and wildly innovative ideas for the time. Sadly, he couldn’t always pull them off the way he’d first imagined, because he didn’t have equally gifted instrumentalists beside him.
His The Nice bandmates, bassist Lee Jackson and Brian ‘Blinky’ Davison, could barely keep up with Keith’s almost boundless talent at this stage of the band, even though they were no slouches on their instruments. Jackson, who was actually one of the better rock bassists of the late sixties, always tried to rescue his limited vocal abilities with an eccentric singing approach, which brought very mixed results. Despite all his efforts, he couldn’t hide the fact that, technically speaking, he was one of the weaker singers of the pioneering prog rock scene, and in the calm, subtle sections he came off as downright laughable, if not pitiable. Davison could often surprise with his drumming, with interesting improvisations and devastating onslaughts, but he lacked that necessary pinch of finesse and imagination to step up among the true masters of his craft.
While making »Nice«, which continued their sound up to that point, Emerson became more and more aware of this, but he still hoped The Nice would somehow keep growing artistically and slowly climb onto the ‘green branch’ commercially too. Keith also made sure the band got some extra, if controversial, attention at their gigs, for example on June 26, 1968, when, in the middle of a performance of Bernstein’s classic America (The Nice put out the studio version as their second single) at the prestigious Royal Albert Hall in England, he set an American flag on fire, which got him banned from that venue for more than twenty years.
Compared to its predecessor »Ars Longa Vita Brevis« (1968), The Nice made barely noticeable artistic progress on »Nice«, even though they stuck with their innovative sonic recipe of fusing jazz, rock, blues and classical. They managed to shake off some of the archaic-sounding psychedelic mannerisms and tie rock to symphonic music and jazz even more convincingly, but the album lacked an ambitious piece on the level of the epic suite »Ars Longa Vita Brevis«, and there were also far too many vocal contributions from Jackson, while the band shines brightest in the instrumental sections. The closing track, a live adaptation of the Bob Dylan classic »She Belongs To Me«, comes closest to the epic suite standard, with Emerson and his partners in crime stretching it to 12 minutes and reworking it beyond recognition.
The first half of the album was made up of studio material. »Azrael Revisited«, whose lyrics refer to the biblical angel of death, features a light honky-tonk rhythm on Emerson’s piano, while Jackson’s honestly declamatory vocals summon Azrael’s arrival. »Hang on to a Dream« is a song originally written by Tim Hardin under the title »How Can We Hang on to a Dream?« and features a choir arranged by Duncan Browne. Here too, Emerson’s classical-jazz piano improvisations take center stage, while Jackson tries to sound like a ‘normal’ singer in the subtle passages, with good choir harmonies covering for his technical shortcomings.
»Diary of an Empty Day« has a cheerful atmosphere and a lively tempo, with Emerson not holding back on passionate organ runs, while Jackson somehow tries to harmonize his technically flawed, overly psychedelic, ‘stoned’-sounding vocals. Of the studio pieces, »For Example« comes off as the most ambitious, already hinting a bit at Emerson’s later achievements with the supergroup ELP. It’s a great example of dynamic, tasteful fusion of classical, blues, jazz and rock, where Jackson’s thick bass lines also get more room to shine, while Davison brings a few jazzy finesses into his drumming. Emerson is once again in a class of his own, and his solo antics on the Hammond organ are almost on par with what he’d later pull off as a member of ELP.
The second half of the album was recorded live during The Nice’s gig at the famous Fillmore East (New York). Both performances soon became live favorites that they played right up until the breakup. Besides the aforementioned adaptation of Dylan’s »She Belongs To Me«, they also played Emerson’s adaptation of the jazz classic »Blue Rondo ala Turk«, originally written by Dave Bruebeck and renamed »Rondo ’69«. Here Emerson goes for his big solo freak-out and, at full steam, shows why he was both the greatest keyboard genius and the greatest keyboard terrorist of his era. Emerson played »Rondo« later on too, when he was already in ELP, in the middle of their set at the legendary Isle of Wight festival in 1970.
»Nice« was yet another The Nice studio effort where the second half of the album beat the first. Chieftain Emerson and his two sidekicks made small but noticeable progress over the previous album and created one of the key works in the development of symphonic progressive rock, but they were nowhere near making enough artistic progress to keep pace with some of the new prog pioneers who showed up on the scene in 1969 and already sounded more revolutionary than The Nice. The following year Emerson tried to make up for it somehow and hired an orchestra for the next The Nice project, »Five Bridges« (1970), but by then he already knew he needed new bandmates.
Lineup
Keith Emerson – keyboards
Lee Jackson – bass guitar, vocals
Brian ‘Blinky’ Davison – drums, percussion
Production
The Nice
Tracklist
1. Azrael Revisited (5:52)
2. Hang on to a Dream (4:46)
3. Diary of an Empty Day (3:54)
4. For Example (8:51)
5. Rondo ’69’ (7:53)
6. She Belongs to Me (12:15)
