Cool new music discovery (for me): The Nice/ Emerlist Davjack

I was killing time flipping through records at HPB this weekend and found a nice copy of The Thoughts of Emerilist Davjack by The Nice. I'd never heard of The Nice or this album but the cover was pretty cool and the vinyl in good condition, so I gave it a shot. Glad I did-- it's great! Psychedelic is basically uncharted territory for me so my reference base is pretty limited as far as evaluating on genre merits, but it's at least a lot of fun and the band seems pretty tight.

And as everyone on this forum but me probably already knows, this was Keith Emerson's band before ELP, which is pretty cool bit of rock history I can stuff in my brain.

 

Welcome to the cult!

Now, get Ars Longa Vita Brevis.

 

The title -- EMERLIST DAVJACK -- is made up of the band members names: keith EMERson, david o'LIST, brian DAVison, and lee JACKson -- just in case you hadn't figured it out....

 

I would get all their albums. Overall, a better group than ELP. I wish I had been able to see them live. Emo really displayed his keyboard chops
with The Nice.

 

Figured it out about 54 years ago . . .

 

The Nice were great but better than ELP no way in my opinion.

 

I agree. Some guy said the same thing about The Nice being better than ELP on another forum and it baffled me there too.

Keith's playing is very similar in both bands. The classical references, bombast, humor, etc. - it's all there pre-ELP. Thing is, Jackson can't really sing and Greg Lake can. Also, Greg brought the tunes (read: hits) like "Lucky Man," "Still, You Turn Me On," "From the Beginning" and "C'est La Vie." He also co-wrote "Tarkus" with Keith, which is my fave ELP track. Come to think of it, he wrote a decent amount of "Karn Evil 9" as well.

 

It's just a matter of taste really. The Nice were more quirky with a bit more jazz feel as well. Did some interesting covers (non-classical) which
ELP didn't do as much. Still like some ELP too. Saw them 6x including their 1st US tour at the Fillmore.

 

Carl Palmer was a better drummer than Brian Davison and I agree with your comments on Greg Lake. But The Nice were very talented just not on the same level as ELP IMHO.

 

They did a LOT of great work, and were popular enough in England to engender a series of reunion shows there about 20 years ago.

One fascinating element of The Nice's output is that no two of their albums sound the same -- whether by design or simple personal musical evolution, they never repeated themselves.

And The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack is their most unabashedly FUN album. (I had the honor of annotating and supervising the production on the first decent sounding CD reissue of the album [and their other two Immediate Records albums] back in 1989-1990 -- it was a release of Sony Music Special Products, which was a division of the successor company to Columbia Records, which had earlier had the Nice's catalog under license direct from Immediate Records, their original label; when we did the CDs, under license from Intersound Communications [which had acquired the rights to the Immediate library], we ignored Intersound's masters, which were substandard, and went right back to the master tapes for the original albums, which were still in the Columbia vaults from the late 1960s).
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I discovered The Nice by way of mod/freakbeat band The Attack. Guitarist Davy O'List left The Attack to join The Nice, where he felt that he would have greater creative input. O'List appears on the Emerlist Davjack album and associated singles and BBC sessions, but left before the second album, I believe because he thought Keith Emerson was dominating the band too much.

Interesting side note, Davy O'List would also occasionally stand in for Syd Barrett when The Nice and Pink Floyd toured together, when Syd was unavailable!

 

From all accounts Davy O'List burned bridges and dynamited his career everywhere he went. He was also in Roxy Music for about the same amount of time as he lasted anywhere else.

He's engaged in quite a bit of revisionist history over the years, highly overstating his contributions to the bands he was in.

 

The Nice were incredible.

Keith said this when the Nice reunited. With no disrespect to Carl Palmer. Brian Davison’s always had robust swing. Five bridges is my favorite.