Gazing out from the low-tech of Pye studio in London, 1968, are The Nice, apparently listening to a playback of a track destined for their second LP, "Ars Longa Vita Brevis". Left to right are drummer Brian 'Blinky' Davison, organist Keith 'no-nickname' Emerson, and bassist Keith 'Lee' Jackson. But what of this pensive 23-year-old in the middle - just what could he be thinking? Perhaps he's wondering how The Nice could possibly have started life as backing group for black British soul singer P P Arnold? Or maybe he's marvelling at the big hit his group has just had with 'America', a violent instrumental from West Side Story via Dvorak? Or perhaps he's trying to work out how to make his Hammond L100 organ sound even more weird? The answer to the last item would come within 12 months, when Emerson would get his hands on one of the first Moog modular synth systems. This gear would eventually collude in the downfall of The Nice and the formation of the ever-more-complex Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Any road up, Keith just had time in this sticky summer of 1968 to say to an off-screen interviewer: "The Nice do a visual as well as a musical act. For instance, I sometimes face the audience with the keyboard behind me and I fiddle around inside the works which gets some really wild noises." Coo, that old analogue technology, eh?

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