Elegy | Loppylugs

Submitted by Glyn Lewis on 31 October 2017 - 1:28pm

Cover:

Artist:

The Nice

album-ID:

a_197

Nationality:

Year:

1 970

Release-year:

0000

Num-of-tracks:

Track-listing:

Hang On to a Dream*My Back Pages*Third Movement, Pathetique*America

Length-in-mins:

Nominator:

Bean

meeting-ID:

m_75

Now-num:

2 017

Spotify-URL:

4i9mKG4nrsin6gntcVL0ap

Short-title:

elegy

nominator-ID:

u_1

Meeting-date:

Tuesday, 5 December 2017

MusicBrainz-URL:

2dec8266-2ecd-3779-83f8-d99912cbb26b

Wikipedia-URL:

Elegy_(The_Nice_album)

Spotify-link-type:

album

Discogs-URL:

Nice-Elegy/master/470149

Allmusic-URL:

elegy-mw0000465501

Musixmatch-URL:

The-Nice/Elegy

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80

reviewed by

Glyn Lewis

I was so much older then / I’m younger than that now

1-2-4

There’s a diverse mix of stuff on their albums generally, which don’t necessarily always fit together that well, but this one feels a lot more coherent – it’s all longer experimental pieces with extended live improvised approach. This suits the strength of the band, who flourish in that longer format.

The idea of the sort of protracted classical music influenced pieces and wantonly complex explorations obviously outstayed its welcome and ended up being reviled but at the time these were new and exciting experimental ideas. Keith Emerson was fusing together quite a few elements – classical, jazz, boogie-woogie, feedback, noise and sound experiments, while helping to forge the early ideas of heavy rock.

I think he has a great, controlled, lucid playing style on the old Joanna and his B3 work is pioneering, especially with all that feedback stuff. I think he’s really an inventive guy, as he adds in loads of themes and touches on the fly, and without it ever missing a beat. The drumming is nice and restrained and I prefer it to Carl Palmer’s, there isn’t this sort of crash and bash competitiveness you get in ELP, Brian has a lighter, jazzier feel. Keith leads with the keyboards and the other two just back him, makes sense to me.

The singing is, of course, not the main attraction here but you can’t have everything can you?
65

reviewed by

Martin Lewis

Nice Cover shame about the contents

2

Elegy was released after The Nice split (hence the name) and features four tracks all having the unmistakable style and (identical) sound of Keith Emerson's keyboard playing, which unfortunately I have now lost my taste for previously being a big fan. I must have listened to this in the past but it is not part of my music collection.

Lots of Jazz riffs, swooping sounds, improvisation. Very muffled lyrics at the end of the first track and strange mumblings by Lee Jackson who sounds very out of sorts in My Back Pages (track 2). Third track, Pathetique, in particular could have been an ELP track in fact all the keyboard playing on any of the tracks could have easily have been ELP tracks. I like the Hipgnosis cover like those big weather ballons on The Prisoner.
64

reviewed by

Neil Hornsey

Typical Emerson stuff, groundbreaking and clever while too sprawling and arty farty at times. Great instrumentation (especially the piano) but could have done without the vocals.