There won’t be many who don’t know that The Nice was Keith Emerson's band that came before the mighty world-conquering trio Emerson Lake & Palmer. The Nice were pioneers in the rise of progressive rock - Originally formed to back soul singer PP Arnold, they soon became a vehicle for keyboard maestro, Keith Emerson to evolve into the showman he eventually became. Their debut LP mixed rock with jazz music, but it was the hard rock demolition job they did of Leonard Bernstein's ‘America’ that took them into the charts and started to get the group noticed. That, together with the outcry caused by Emerson's protest against US involvement in Vietnam, where he set fire to the ‘stars and stripes’ during ‘live’ performances of ‘America’, really brought the band bang into the media spotlight. Although Emerson's next band, ELP, enjoyed far more worldwide success, it was the Nice that remain the true pioneering act in the evolution of progressive rock of the mid-late 1960’s. This 256 page hard-back book, written by Nice/ELP expert Martyn Hanson, includes 16 pages of rare photographs of the band and offers a superb insight to the history of this groundbreaking 1960’s act. Hanson’s other related book on ELP, entitled ‘The Show That Never Ends’ has sold more than 10,000 units to date, and this one too, must surely be heading in that direction.

109611
Weight: 350.00 g