The Nice The Thoughts

Although a psychedelic record , this album turns out to be the first progressive rock album ever made along with the Moody Blues's Days Of Future Past and Procol Harum's debut (even if the original vinyl did not have Whiter Shade Of Pale), two years before the Crimson King's In the Court of the Crimson King. Yes , without this record most of the progressive masterpieces probably would've never come out in the form we know them. One of the main flaws is the muddy sound recording qualty but we are in 1967!

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. This 2CD collection is drawn from the band's 3 main albums and brings together all their big tracks from their brief, but influential career.

The Nice were an English progressive rock band active in the late 1960s. They blended rock, jazz and classical music and were keyboardist Keith Emerson's first commercially successful band. The group was formed in 1967 by Emerson, Lee Jackson, David O'List and Ian Hague to back soul singer P. P. Arnold. After replacing Hague with Brian Davison, the group set out on their own, quickly developing a strong live following. The group's sound was centred on Emerson's Hammond organ showmanship and abuse of the instrument, and their radical rearrangements of classical music themes and Bob Dylan songs. The band achieved commercial success with an instrumental rearrangement of Leonard Bernstein's "America", following which O'List left the group. The remaining members carried on as a trio, releasing several albums, before Emerson decided to split the band in early 1970 in order to form Emerson, Lake & Palmer. The group briefly reformed in 2002 for a series of concerts.

Originally, this collection was put together in 1972 by Tony Stratton-Smith from outtakes of the Nice's early stay at Immediate Records, and issued (at least, in the U.S.) with no explanation and little annotation, making it a bit confusing to longtime fans of Keith Emerson and the trio. Its timing was also unfortunate, in that a huge cache of record club copies of the Nice's first three albums on Immediate, pressed by Columbia Special Products, had shown up in cut-out bins at just about the same time. One had to listen closely to see that everything here was an alternate take of material from the band's first two albums. Essentially, Autumn 1967/ Spring 1968 (aka Autumn to Spring) was an outtake version of the group's debut long-player, The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack, shorn of the two longest tracks from that album, "Rondo" and "War and Peace"…

Five Bridges is a delectable representation of early-'70s progressive rock. Its makeup contains all of the elements needed to complete a solid prog album: a heavy intermingling of synthesizer and electric guitar, strong punctuation of both bass and drums, a central concept, and the fusing of rock and classical music, which in this case employs the Sinfonia of London. The eight tracks, centered around Newcastle's urban structure and life in a blue collar society, are as colorful as they are intricate. "Intermezzo" from Sibelius' Karelia Suite, and Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique" are marvelous examples of classical and rock commingling, with the spotlight focused on Keith Emerson's keyboard virtuosity…