The Nice: The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack (1967)

Digging back into my stash of 60s UK psyche again...

While largely viewed as a brief weigh station for Keith Emerson before putting together ELP, The Nice were actually pretty decent, and their debut with the funny title (cribbed from the band members' last names) is a surprisingly entertaining psychedelic, pre-progressive rock trifle. Yes, Emerson's keyboard bombast is already threatening to edge out the rest of the music, but for the most part the album avoids some of ELP's excesses (which isn'...