I've previously mentioned the old Liverpool Record Library opposite the cathedral, and how I'd be sent down there by my dad to pick up records he'd ordered, the deal being I could use one of his four tickets for myself as reward.
Not that there was much on offer. They weren't trusting scruffy pop music fans with anything as delicate as vinyl, but there were a few cassettes to be had.
At this age, I'd fallen under the spell of Messrs Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and The Nice were a thing of the past before I'd ever heard of them. But knowing that this was Keith Emerson's first band, it seemed worth investigating, and Five Bridges was my introduction to The Nice.
The first half is The Five Bridges Suite, commissioned for the Newcastle Arts Festival in 1969 (there being five bridges crossing the Tyne between Newcastle and Gateshead at the time).
It's a combination of the orchestral, the vocal, with piano and brass interludes. Staring with the orchestral theme, it quickly moves into an Emerson piano diversion before the orchestra returns, gently ushering in Lee Jackson's first, lively song about his home town, with Emerson back on the organ, noodling around effortlessly. The mood slows as Jackson delivers a slower, wistful love song to the city, punctuated by Emerson piano doodles, concluding the piece with some boogie-woogie style piano leading into the finale, a reprise of the first song which concludes with a lovely brass section, the trombone solo standing out.
It's a great twenty minutes or so, a really enjoyable mix of styles, and for me, very evocative of the Newcastle of the 1970s I occasionally visited.
The second half contains three pieces, all with classical bases. Sibelius's Karelia Suite, in the first instance with the orchestra backed by some rock drumming from Brian Davison, before some Hammond noodling nd a couple of minutes of electronic farts, burps and crashes, before the orchestra is allowed to play us out again. Tchaikovsky's Pathetique Symphony 3rd Movement is played fairly straight by the orchestra for a few minutes, before the melody is taken over by the Hammond organ for a couple, with them joining for the final rush to the end. It's a reasonable listen, but begs the question, why? Either the orchestral or the band version would have worked equally, and I'm not sure the joining of them works. There's a drum solo towards the end, but since it's kept to under 30 seconds, it's almost forgivable. Finally, there's a fusion of Bob Dylan's Country Pie with Bach's Brandenberg Concerto No 6, which again, is a reasonable listen, even if the fusion is a bit forced.
This being the 1990 reissue, there's a few bonus tracks, mostly from the Autumn '67-Spring '68 compilation. One Of Those People is a creepy little number, while The Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjack is a bouncy tune from the band's first album. Flower King Of Flies is a bit of a psychedelic nothingness, while similarly, Bonnie K feels like an unsuccessful Hendrix imitation. Diary Of An Empty Day offers little, but it's worth waiting for the rousing version of Bernstein's America, probably the most satisfying thing on the bonus tracks.
Despite my little grumbles, I do think this is a great album, the Five Bridges Suite in particular standing up well, half a decade later.
4* - a massively enjoyable part of my younger listening, which I still return to today.
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