The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack (The Nice, 1967)

If you stumbled upon this looking for the short-lived Australian band Nice (1991-1994), then I'm sorry to tell you that this is about the short-lived English band The Nice (1967-1971) and their first album. I don't know anything about the former band other than the fact they have a similar name to a band I know a bit more about. Anyhow.....

Like most people, The Nice appeared on my radar because it's the band that contributed Keith Emerson to Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Unlike Greg Lake in King Crimson and Carl Palmer in Atomic Rooster, Emerson was no side player in The Nice, but the main attraction. The band initially was assembled as a backing band for singer P. P. Arnold, which seemed to be a big thing to pair American female singers with British rock bands at the time. The instigator was none other than Andrew Loog Oldham, of Rolling Stones fame. None of the band members were particularly well-known, except maybe guitarist Davy O'List who had freakbeat credentials from The Attack. The experiment with backing Arnold seemed to work for a few seconds before the band took on a life of its own, mainly driven by Emerson.

The first album, The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack, was recorded and released in 1967 but hit the markets so late in the year it often gets a 1968 release credit. This in turn led a number of critics to feel that The Nice came to the psych-rock party too late to be much of a player. Nicer critics (no pun intended) looking back from a later time, however, cited the album as a herald of the nascent prog rock movement. Listening to it closely, one can see valid points in both arguments. For those familiar with the band's entire output and early ELP, the first Nice album stands apart from the rest. The obvious difference is that Emerson is sparring with an actual guitarist, not a guest guitarist or the bass player moonlighting on lead. O'List is certainly a weird foil. He never really dominates Emerson on any song, though he is always present. He has a really wild style, clearly of the Hendrix school. If Emerson sometimes gets a little crazy in his solos, then O'List with about the same frequency plays calmly. It actually works strangely well, hearing a neo-classical lick from Emerson followed by a distorted scattershot reply from O'List. Lee Jackson (bass) and Brian Davison (drums, replacing Ian Hague right after the split with Arnold) serve as the nothing-special-but-not-bad-either rhythm section. They tend to shine more on the later albums. About half the songs on Emerlist Davjack are more pop-orientated ("Bonnie K", "Tantalising Maggie"), with the most pop-leaning being credited to Jackson/O'List. The others are extended works with heavy avant-garde and classical leanings ("Dawn", "War and Peace"), though relatively restrained compared to Emerson's later work. "Rondo" is an great early example of what Emerson would use to great effect later in his career, turning a classic piece, in this case Dave Brubeck's "Blue Rondo a la Turk", on its ear. The cool jazz standard is ripped out of its time signature and put into a straight 4/4 giving it a gallop that sounds like something more akin to a Western scene where the cavalry is riding to the rescue, and a fire that one would never think of as "cool" anything.

One matter which would ultimately lead to the collapse of the band was the fact that nobody could really sing. Since they were originally designed as a backing band, I don't think vocals were very high on the list of requirements when they formed. Emerson, Jackson, and O'List all try their darnedest (Davison knew his limitations), but, man the singing here is pretty bad and it's saying something that the strongest numbers ("Rondo" and "America", the A-side single release that appears in the bonus tracks) are instrumentals. When O'List quit the band after this album, reducing The Nice to a trio, this didn't help matters at all, as he was probably their strongest voice. To spare Emerson and particularly Jackson from singing much, the band retreated to even longer mostly-instrumental tracks.

Although Emerson's prowess continued to grow over the next few albums, none of them have quite the balanced feel of the first album. Ultimately it drove Emerson to seek new musical sparring partners and, rather than sacking Jackson and Davison, he left his own band and formed ELP. Jackson and Davison went off to relatively obscure projects like Refugee and Jackson Heights. Meanwhile, O'List, who never returned to the band, not even for reunions or to help out, had one of the weirdest journeys in rock history, almost Zelig-esque. He had already filled in once for Syd Barrett in Pink Floyd, and post-Nice would appear in Roxy Music, Jet, and The Misunderstood (three bands I usually don't think of at the same time) though never in their most famous arrangements. In 1997, a full thirty years following this album, he made his solo debut. According to his website (long gone - go to the archived one if you're curious), he split with The Nice because he didn't feel they were commercial enough. True, each successive Nice album would take the band further away from pop and more toward classical. Then again, O'List also very boldly takes credit for his frankly minimal contributions to the aforementioned bands and takes credit for the naming of the band Yes.

A final word on the album itself. My version is culled from the box set Here Come the Nice, a great and comprehensive overview of the first three albums, recorded for the Immediate label. My only issue is that the arrangement of tracks was a little confusing. In other words it's neither chronological, nor are all album tracks necessarily together. Therefore the second song (the title track) of the original album is now the first on my version, followed by its B-side, the non-album track "Azrael (Angel of Death)" and then a John Peel narrated sampler advert that was too good to remove. The rest of the album follows in original track order, but without the already-played title track. After that is both sides of the "America" single, a couple live cuts, an extended version of the title track, and alternate versions of some other tracks. Did you catch all of that? In the end I managed to expand a slight 8-song album into a beefy 21-song extravaganza!