No Filler Music Podcast - Sidetrack: The Nice - Flower Kings of Prog Rock

Episode Date: September 22, 2019

On this week's sidetrack episode, we listen to another track from early prog rockers The Nice. Although short-lived, the group's fusion of rock, jazz, classical music was a key influence of the progressive rock movement throughout the 70s. This show is part of Pantheon Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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My name is Quentin. I've got my brother Travis with me as always. Last week we covered Yes and their album from 1971, Fragile. And we're going to kind of hang out in the Prague rock genre again today with a band called The Nice, who we covered a little bit last week. We're going to listen to a song from the same album that we covered. last week from theirs. Travis, what you got for me? Yeah, so we played a song by these guys called Rondo, which was sort of a mashup of blue Rondo a la Turk by the jazz piano player Dave Brubbeck.

And Sebastian Bach, wait, not Sebastian Bach, the fucking hair metal guy. I'm talking about Johann Sebastian box Tokata and fugue I didn't mean to pronounce it that way What was what now Oh let me just say it again And Johann Sebastian box Tokata and fugue in D minor

And it was sort of a An example of how early Early Prague rock was doing Was sort of mashing up classical And rock and roll And that was kind of You know, started with, a lot of people say it started with the Moody Blues and Days of Future Past, which we mentioned last week. And these guys are thrown in there as sort of early pioneers of progressive rock.

So the thing about... So, and okay, how much time has passed between that Moody Blues record and this one? I mean, a few months probably. So this one came out in March of 68. Okay. The Moody Blues, Days of Future Past, came out in... November of 67. So yeah, you know, just a few months.

Cool. So yeah, it's around the same time. That Rondo song that we played last week did not feature any vocals. So I wanted to circle back, play another track. Dang, have a nice little rhyme going there. Ooh, I like that. We're going to circle back, play another track.

Circle back, play another track. God. Damn it. Sorry. You know, just to give these guys a little bit more exposure. And this song is really dope, too. You know, it's a sidetrack episode. So let's keep it nice and sweet.

So the name of this album, again, is the thoughts of Emerlist Davjack, which is sort of a anagram. It's a mashup of their last names, right? It's a pseudonym. That's the proper term. of their last names, Emmer, being Keith Emerson of Emerson, Lincoln Palmer.

So that's kind of what they're, you know, if you need to know like who the guys are in this group, Keith Emerson is really the big name that you would recognize. I was reading up a little bit more about this, and I thought this was just kind of funny. But one of the other members, Lee Jackson, after they recorded this record,

I'm reading a story online that says he became less and less reliable after beginning to use LSD, which he had first been exposed to by David Crosby, who spiked his drink. I know, dude. I've actually heard another story where David Crosby introduced some other musician to LSD. Like it just sounds like he was just walking around, passing out LSD to whoever would take it from him. When we fucking covered... Crosby's Sills and Ash. No, we covered the moment.

and the papas. Oh, that's right. Crosby and Mama Cass, dude. Like, I feel like he was the one that introduced her to all those fucking drugs, man, and, like, led to her to climb. That's what I'm saying. Dude, he's just roaming around, passing it out to whoever we'll take it from. Anyway, so this band was short-lived, but

I don't know if that's one of the reasons, but, um, yeah, so, so frustrated with the lack of success, Mr. Keith Emerson left and then he started Emerson Lincoln Palmer and they became, uh, you know. They became Emerson, like Palmer. So yeah. Anyway, um, this song is called the Flower King of Flies. And if that doesn't sound like straight out of the 60s, I know what does, dude. Flower King. Let's give it a go. We're gonna play the whole song, right? That's right. It's, um, relatively short. Let's do it. I just want to know how,

how it must have felt to be at the right age, at the right time, and to have stumbled across the nice back in the 60s, because, like, were they getting radio play? You know, like, was this something that you had to just stumble across or, like, see them live to know that they existed, you know? It's a great question. Dude, I mean... It's totally different. It's totally different now, dude. The late 60s was the time to be fucking listening to rock, man. How do you come across a band like The Nice back in the 60s? I don't know, dude. I mean, it's not like there wasn't radio because it was radio.

Sure. But I just don't know. I don't know if they would have gotten radio play or not. Yeah. But, I mean, think about it, dude. We have to stumble upon, I mean, I know you, it's much easier, obviously, but you know how many bands you and I listen to you that don't ever get radio play? I mean, we stumble upon them. Right.

Right. Just bouncing around on Spotify and stuff. I mean, I know it's not. You got to be, yeah, you're going to be looking for it. Yeah, you still got to look for it. Yeah, it must have been, there must have been more magic to it, man, you know? Right. Or like, sense of discovery, you know?

Yeah, exactly. That's why I love collecting vinyl, dude, because, like, for me, I'm flipping through records at a record shop, and sometimes I'll pick up a record just based on the album cover. Right. That's the same kind of feeling. Like, you stumble across something in the wild. You have no idea what it's going to be, and you listen to it. And, you know, it's something special.

Right. Yeah. I don't know. Hey, if you're listening to us right now and you're of age, you know, and you heard the nice back in the 60s, let us know how you heard about them. Like, did you hear them on the radio? Did you fucking pick up one of the records because you liked their cover art? I'm curious about this kind of stuff. Let us know.

Yeah. That's a good point. So like I was saying Late 60s This was it You know This was Zeppelin was about to happen You know

Sabbath was about to happen You know And then you go And you know Woodstock happens It's 69 So like this was it man This was the time to listen to rock music

So Yeah These guys These guys helped us You're in Prague Rock Dude What a fucking time Yeah man

We miss it dude We'll never We'll never know We'll never know We missed all of it, man. That's all right. You know what? We still get to, you know, we can pull it up on Spotify any old time and push play.

Any old time, dude. Sure, sure, sure. Anyway, that's all I got. So this is great, man. Yeah, I mean, just, it's a cool, it's a cool album. Honestly, aside from like the organ, which I really like that little organ trill thing that happens right before the first chorus. Yeah, that's cool.

I don't think there's anything in particular about that song that makes me think, oh, wow, this is a progressive rock song. Same, dude, I was thinking it. I didn't want to say it. Yeah, no, I mean, you know, the one, the track that we played last week, Rondo, I think it's a little bit more obvious because they're taking a Brubeck jazz song and a song by Sebastian Bach and sort of matching them together. and it's instrumental and it was a little bit longer and they sort of came in and out of those genres on like this underbed of rock music. So that was a little bit more obvious. So it's not like this track in particular

you could call progressive rock. Hey man, that's what side tracks are for. Yeah, I mean, it's a cool track, you know. Totally. So I was into it. Yeah. Anyway, if you're curious, go check it out. Check out the album.

It's called, the thoughts of Emerilist Davdab shit that's hard to say the thoughts of Emerilist Dav Jack and it was their debut record 1967 sorry

1968 is when it came out and that's that man side track short and sweet and we're going to do something on this side track that we've never done before and that we're going to oh shit yeah dude continue to do

going forward because you just we can't stop dude all we do is is share music you can't stop us so we're going to do our what you heard segment every episode or yeah we're going to try our damnedest to do it every episode how about that so if you care to stick around we're going to share a couple more tracks but these are completely random it's whatever we have stumbled upon this week and are jamming to this week could be a brand new track could be a track from the 60s. All right. So we're going to take a quick break and when we get back, we're going to play our What You Heard's. And we're back. So Q, you said you're going to go first? Let's hear what you

got. All right. Dude, have you heard of a band called Salt, S-A-U-L-T, all caps? What's with the all-capital letters these days? You don't know. Like bands are doing that all the time. No, I've never heard of them. No. Okay. I had neither. I heard a song from theirs on K-E-X-P the other day. Can I stop you right there? Okay. So many songs that you brought to the table you've heard on K-E-X-P. It's just the perks of living in Seattle, dude. K-E-X-P is fucking amazing, dude.

I can't stress that enough. So this is a band that is purposely trying to be kind of mysterious. They're purposely not doing any interviews. There's not a lot about this band online.

This is their debut album it came out this year. It's called 5, the number 5. I had a really hard time picking a song from this album to play today because they're all great.

It really spans a lot of genres. There's elements of funk and like old. old school like bebop and soul. There's a lot going on with this record. I'm going to play my favorite one that kind of sticks out to me and I'm going to play the whole song. There's really not that many, that much singing in the song.

It's more like just talking throughout the song. And I just like the message behind it. This song is called Think About It. I feel like I need to work it out and think about it. Did you like it, dude? Yeah, no, I liked it a lot. So, you know, there was a lot of, you know, kind of had some like Motown vibes.

Yeah, dude. And had some soul to it. That's the thing about this record, man. It's, it's all those things, all wrapped up in one. Yeah, that's cool. And it's cool because like, like I said, I had a hard time picking a song. This is kind of like a, just like a more lighthearted kind of song on the record,

you know, like it's, you know, she's saying things like, if you don't know, acts like you know. It's called fake until you make it, dude. Exactly. Yeah, like I just love it, man. It's cool. And I like the baseline.

Made a whole career about faking it until I made it, you know? Dude, you and me both, brother. Anyways, so the album is called Five. It just came out this year. The band is called Salt. It's all caps. S-A-U-L-T. Check it out.

It's a great. listen from start to finish. What you got for us today, bro? All right, Q, this is a fresh dropped beat. And by beat, I mean, it's just a song. It's not like an only one.

It came out in, well, it came out this week, I think. It came out on, man, it's hard to find information sometimes. Right? Especially when you need it right now.

now while we're recording. Okay, it came out last week. So it came out September 13th. Okay. In 2019. So it's brand spanking new, depending on when you listen to this episode. But this is one of my favorite singer-songwriters.

His name is Luke Temple. And you may know him from the band. Here we go, Magic. Okay. Yeah, which was kind of popular back in the 2010s. And they haven't done much. as a group. I don't know if they're on hiatus or what,

but their last album was four years ago called Be Small. But Luke has been pretty prolific just doing his own solo stuff. He's actually started, he actually has two solo projects. He kind of reminds me of, I feel like I'm starting to mention this guy's name every week now, but he reminds me of Chaz Bundick of Toro Imoa. He's got multiple side projects. Tori Ma, or I should, Chasmundic, you know, he does stuff under Toro Ima, he does his own solo

stuff under his name, and then he does some electronic stuff under the name Lay Sins. So anyway, this guy is super talented. He's a singer-songwriter who kind of remind, like, he is so sort of experimental and like quirky and sort of, he has a lot of different genres that he matches together. But anyway, let's listen to the song and then we'll talk about this guy a little bit more. But again, I just love this guy. I think his songwriting is super creative and original and unique. This album is called Both and.

And we're going to listen to a song called Don't Call Me Windy. And we're going to let it play for quite a bit of the song here. So here we go. loved that, man. Get ready to love the whole album, man, because it's, I mean, that's just how he, that's how he writes. What a unique fucking songwriter, man. That's what I'm telling you.

Dude, I'm telling you, man, you got to go back and listen to his, his whole catalog, dude. Anyway, so like I said, super, super original, right? And like, he kind of reminds me, like, when he does that really sort of like, that turn on a on a on a on a double you know he switches it up a little bit there in that song and there's like that stop moment in the song like he kind of it makes me think of David Byrne

of talking heads okay yeah you know how he would do really quirky stuff like that sometimes totally um and you know his voice kind of reminds me of Paul Simon sometimes the you know the drum beat in the background the whole time was kind of a unique drum sound I liked that

dude, I like to how repetitive that was. Yeah, it was constant. Yeah, I love that kind of stuff, dude. Yeah. So this guy's great, man. So this whole album is really good. And it's, you know, we say this all the time. This is one of those records that you just need to push play on track one and let it go, especially on this album because... That's our fucking motto, dude. I know. We say it every week. But like, with this record in particular, it's one of those things where each song flows into the next seamlessly, you know? So it's meant to be played all the way through. You know, he's, he's taking on a journey. So anyway, again, this guy's name is Luke Temple. Let me read something real quick from the record label, Native Cat recordings.

They said, both end is a record encompassing both the beautiful and the jarring, both the bright pop hooks of Temple's work with Here We Go Magic and a thrilling experimental bent with songs looking directly at, living within time passing. There you go. So that's, I don't know what more you need to hear. Pull it up, push play. It's called Both and by Luke Temple. So there you go.

That'll do it for this week. Again, this was our sidetrack episode for last week's coverage on Fragile by Yes. And next week, Q, are we going to spill beans or not? I don't remember what we're doing. covering next week, dude. Oh, don't worry. Let me tell you. Next week, we're finally going to talk about Queens of the Stone Age and the record songs for the death. I mean, if there's ever been, you know, we've talked about on, you know, a few episodes here and there, we'll say, hey, this is one of those albums that since the inception of this podcast, we knew that we were going to talk about

this record at some point. And this is one of those records. Absolutely, dude. I can't wait. This is sort of the premature start. of our metal month that's going to start in October. Yes. Dude, October is going to be great, man. I'm excited to get into metal with you,

dude, because it's one of those genres that I've never really clicked with. I enjoy it. Dude, you're about to start clicking. I enjoy it when I hear it and I appreciate it, but I just, I don't listen to metal on my own.

So if it isn't for you, I'm not going to listen to it. So I'm excited to get into it for a whole month. with you, dude. Get ready to start clicking, dude. I'm ready. It's going to start, you're going to be clicking all over the place. I'm ready. So get ready. Dude, I'm ready. Yeah. So I think we're, are you ready or not? Dude, I'm so ready. So next week, like I said, we're going to start it off with Queen to the Stone Age, one of the most successful of the desert rock stoner rock genre. And basically, it's just going to be a love fest for Josh Holm,

the singer, lead singer-songwriter. Dude, for Josh Holm and for Dave Grohl, for popping up in the record and for this album in particular. Just killing it on the drums. We get to hear Dave Grohl get behind the kit. I mean, what more do you need to know? So, all right. That's going to be great, man.

I can't fucking wait. I am so excited, man. Yeah, that's all I need to hear. So anyway, that's that. That'll be next week. And that'll do it. So check us out at, well, you can find our website on pantheonpodcast.com. That's the network that we're a part of.

It's a music podcast network. And you can find our, you'll see our album art on there. Just click it. It'll take you to our website. While you're on the Pantheon podcast website, you can check out lots of other great music podcasts. We are the premier music podcast network. Am I allowed to say that? I just did.

You just did. And I think you're right, brother. Hey, prove me wrong, you know. All right, we're going to have the nice play us out. And this song is called War and Peace. So until next week, my name is Travis. And I'm Quentin. We'll see y'all next week.