Shoulda Been A Hit: 1967

I've collected a lot of songs over the years, and created "Best Of" compilations for every year from 1967 to the present. Fills up my 8G iPod quite nicely for some interesting random play! Quite often, a song comes up that's got a great hook and is so catchy I think, "This must've been a big hit for them." But I look up the song and find out it never made the charts. Well, I thought I'd do my part and put some of those songs out there, and see if you agree that they Shoulda Been A Hit.

The Creation, "How Does It Feel To Feel"



1967 was a time a great social contrast: Peace movements, hippies, mind expanding drugs and free love, as well as violence, race riots and escalation in Vietnam. The Creation, a mod band from England, seemed to straddle both sides of the times with this song:



The lyrics start out darkly and would make Edgar Allen Poe proud:

How does it feel when a shadow moves you
How does it feel rustles by your bed
How does it feel when it finally holds you
How does it feel when you're thinking your dead

but then the mood lifts:

How does it feel when you wake in the morning
How does it feel feeling sun in the shade
How does it feel when you slide down a sunbeam
How does it feel bursting clouds on your way
How does it feel now that the night is over

Maybe it was the harshness and feedback of the guitars that turned listeners off, who weren't quite ready for the sound that would make groups like Led Zeppelin huge in a couple of years. So maybe it was a case of "ahead of their time?"

In 1994, the Oxfordshire, England group Ride did a nice cover of it. Critics have called Ride a "neo-psychedelic" band, and this really cemented their reputation.



I liked their original songs the best, though, especially 1992's Going Blank Again.