2000 Great Songs #1478: The Cry Of Eugene
It's time for our second visit to The Nice 's 1968 debut The Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjack . And while at that early date the band were already starting to generate prog bombast alongside straight if overly fussy classical music, tendencies which Keith Emerson would massively expand on when he split off to form ELP , the album also had some trippy psychedelia more in line with the sort of acid-drenched strangeness offered up by bands like Pink Floyd and the Pretty Things . That's most apparent on album-closer "The Cry of Eugene," which is chock full of phased guitars and panned vocals and all manner of headphone-friendly remnants of the psychedelic age. It doesn't hurt that Emerson is relatively restrained here, some bubbly organ riffs but mostly staying out of the way. Maybe not a great lost classic, but the sort of thing that would stand out on any Nuggets -styled psych compilation. (And no, I don't know if there's any relationship between this tr...
