Unlucky For Some: The 13 most underrated songs from 1967
The year 1967 not only defined the swinging decade, from afar it almost looks like a parody of the hectic zeitgeist. Peaking with the summer of love, this was the Chelsea Flower Show of the floral counterculture revolution. And it was also the pinnacle of the same old problems; the Vietnam War was rampant, race riots ravaged in the US, and Muhammad Ali fought against the draft board.
All the while, The Beatles went wild with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band, The Velvet Underground invented indie but proved so far ahead of their time that their debut only reached 171 in the charts, Love released Forever Changes, Aretha Franklin blew us all away… again, Jimi Hendrix reinvented everything we thought we knew about the guitar, The Who sat in a bath of beans, ‘Waterloo Sunset’ blessed the airways, and the world said hell to the beloved Leonard Cohen.
Music and culture were thriving. Hell, it seemed that art made well have been mounting an attack on the bourgeoisie. Alas, drug busts at Keith Richards’ gaff, and Jim Morrison being thrown in the slammer, and sniper fire raining over the Newark, New Jersey riots hinted at the problems at hand. Things were coming to a head—everything was being amplified. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, but mostly it was both.
This heightened zeitgeist meant that many musical efforts that now seem cheesy were championed by the charts, and this left a slew of more subtle or self-referential efforts struggling to gain attention. Nevertheless, there was enough love around to keep even a flickering tune alive. So, we’ve harnessed the embers of the tracks that shone but never caught ablaze in the distracted public’s imagination below. These are the lesser-known belters from ’67.
Unlucky For Some: The 13 most underrated songs from 1967:
13. ‘The Letter’ – The Box Tops
Memphis is one of the world’s most revered music towns. So, it made sense that despite only forming a few months earlier, The Box Tops had a level of musical competency already in place to be able to rattle off a hit that rested among the sound of the era sweetly. And yet Alex Chilton’s gruff vocals separate them from the crowd with a muscular sense of soul.
This debut single arrived without even much rehearsal time, but that only adds to the ruggedness that makes it a toe-tapping wonder with a wealth of personality. As Chilton recalled: “We set up and started running the tune down … [Dan Penn] adjusted a few things on the organ sound, told the drummer not to do anything at all except the basic rhythm that was called for. No rolls, no nothing. The bass player was playing pretty hot stuff, so he didn’t mess with what the bass player was doing.”
12. ‘Why Did I Get so High’ – The Peanut Butter Conspiracy
Any band with a name like The Peanut Butter Conspiracy with an album title like The Peanut Butter Conspiracy is Spreading are worth a bit of your time. Refreshingly, this outfit represent the self-referential side of the ‘60s. The eras heart was in the right place but some of the new age extremes were indeed laughable, so The Peanut Butter Conspiracy decided to laugh at them but without any cynicism.
‘Why Did I Get so High’ might not be a masterpiece but is this context that makes it an interesting listen. In fact, it is almost a meta-definition of the times—a parody piece that presciently captured more about the era than it could ever have imagined. From flowery melodies and quirky instrumentation, to getting too far out of your gaud, this trip has it all.
11. ‘The Revolt of The Dyke Brigade’ – John Fahey
John Fahey is one of the finest guitarists to have ever lived, but because he stayed clear of getting flashy on an electric he rarely sits amid the top of your typical ‘Best Ever’ lists. However, while others have pizzazz, Fahey has patience. He allows his pieces to breathe, to be dictate themselves, and as such his intricate approach takes you on a little story.
Without words, ‘The Revolt of The Dyke Brigade’ still somehow has narrative drama. Like a one-man orchestra, he weaves a scene for the imagination to play in, and I’ll be damned if there isn’t a simple prettiness for everyone to admire to boot.
10. ‘Never My Love’ – The Association
American sunshine pop from California just sounds like a pleasant proposition from the get-go. Throw in the famed Wrecking Crew session musicians, and an old standard written by the esteemed Don and Dick Addrisi, and you’ve got yourself a perfectly packaged ‘60s gem that still shines a few rays your way even today.
If this anthem was any more laid-back it would be lying down, and from that pillow-propped perch of dreaminess, it offers up a lulling anthem of soothing reflection. Amid these hectic days of the 21st century, it’s a joy to kick back and delve into something that simply sighs without a care in the world. Furthermore, it’s very rare that you find a group all sport the very same ‘encirclement of civil gentry’ haircut.
9. ‘Groovin’’ – The Young Rascals
If you were composing a collage of the ‘60s to explain the era to a curious ET, then this stoned stroll down the streets would surely have to feature to showcase white suburban life in a hippy-inclined area. And I’ll be damned if the alien doesn’t start tapping its tentacles and declaring Earth a pretty chilled out place.
Having formed in 1965, the band enjoyed enough success to sustain them until 1972 and a string of reunions have since kept the legacy alive. Along the way, they perhaps never topped ‘Groovin’’ and who can blame them? If any song has encapsulated a sunny, sanguine Sunday afternoon better, then I don’t know it. The spinning vinyl even seems to emanate a breeze.
8. ‘8:05’ – Moby Grape
I suspect that ‘8:05’ is not a time of day that any of Moby Grape witnessed which is perhaps why they have strangely mythologised it with such mellow beauty – imagining that it’s a pleasant time when the proletariat beginning scurrying into the day – without realising it’s one of the most hellish minutes in the working week.
All the same, it is simply a gorgeous track from a brilliant band who were tragically beset by too much of Augustus Owsley Stanley III’s potent LSD. Things went sour for the band when drummer Skip Spence tried to kill everyone with an axe during an episode. However, there isn’t a hint of that in this luscious lullaby that brings to mind joyous fresh starts in an indie movie.
7. ‘Flowers in the Rain’ – The Move
It’s 1967, of course flowers were going to feature again. The track arrived a month after Scott McKenzie sang ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)’ and continued the era’s happy-clapy hippy revolution. But this almost seemed amiss in the band’s hometown of Birmingham where job losses ran rampant and, in some ways, you could almost say that this song was the final straw before Black Sabbath and the likes decided to offer up their reality.
Nevertheless, this daft dream is a harmless effort. With Roy Wood’s wizard-like ability to craft a poppy melody that anyone can sing along to shining through, this effort proved seamless. However, the reason it sustains some class to this day is that there is evidently an undercurrent of something acerbic in the mix. This would later come to the fore in the disastrous publicity campaign that depicted Prime Minister Harold Wilson in bed with his secretary—he later successfully sued for libel and donating his winning damages to charity.
6. ‘Born Under a Bad Sign’ – Albert King
Bad luck and the blues are inexorably linked. “I can’t read,” Albert King once said, “I don’t know how to write, my whole life has been one big fight.” But bad luck, good luck and a wry smile about both, it all comes out in the blues, and with ‘Born Under a Bad Sign’ King delivers one of the genre’s most encompassing masterpieces.
The track is brimming with wit and wisdom, pain and hardship, defiance and power, skill and singularity. The song has whisky on its breath and the moon above it. It makes for an anthem of epic proportions that stands aside the music of the times as something a little more timeless making astrology seem like more than a mere new age cash-in on the back pages of Pseudoscience Weekly.
5. ‘Dear Mr Fantasy’ – Traffic
The textured guitar tone that adds a depth of poetry to this melody is a rarity in music heard elsewhere in the world of Zamrock from bands like Ofege and in some of the post-punk groups to come. The added noodling to a melodious riff adds a greater welter of emotion to the track turning it into something gorgeous.
Reminiscent of lending the scales of the sitar to the muscularity of the electric guitar, the jangling tones on display by Traffic open up a surrealist world with ease. The rock outfit from Birmingham featuring Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Chris Wood and Dave Mason, offered up a mellowed take on psychedelia. The stellar musicians also ingeniously bring elements of jazz into the mix to make for a masterpiece.
4. ‘Ode to Billy Joe’ – Bobbie Gentry
Bobbie Gentry is one of the greatest songwriters of all time and that has been said nowhere near enough. With ‘Ode to Billie Joe’ she crafted a mystery for the ages that alluringly begs a million more questions than it answers, but unlike some Netflix series ending that is holding out for a sequel, it leaves you the antithesis of frustrated and left beguiled by her rhythmic prose.
It’s a song about death; however, the death, in this instance, is dealt with the same jejune everyday air as table salt, only adding to the mystery itself. Fortunately, Gentry did offer up a clue as to why, stating: “The message of the song revolves around the nonchalant way the family talks about the suicide. The song is a study in unconscious cruelty.”
Adding: “It’s entirely a matter of interpretation as from each individual’s viewpoint. But I’ve hoped to get across the basic indifference, the casualness, of people in moments of tragedy. Something terrible has happened, but it’s ‘pass the black-eyed peas’, or ‘y’all remember to wipe your feet.’” In this way, the twist is almost left lingering in the ear of the beholder, and it’s joyously spooky. What really happened at the Tallahatchie Bridge?
3. ‘In the Heat of the Morning’ – David Bowie
“This is very obscure. I don’t know anybody else that knows it, but it’s fucking amazing,” Noel Gallagher told Rolling Stone. Adding: “The first person ever to play it for me was Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols, years and years ago. I was like, ‘What’s that?’ And he says, ‘It’s fuckin’ David Bowie’. People talk about Bowie’s guises, or his looks, or his personas, but it’s little-known that he started off as a Scott Walker-type dude. This song is very mid-Sixties Brit-pop. Great organ sound, brilliantly produced. You should check it out. “
The epic effort might not have surface until Bowie’s 1970 compilation album The World of David Bowie, but the unreleased gem is his finest early track. Brimming with the influence of Jacques Brel and his own quirkiness, it slots in somewhere between timeless showtunes from Tin Pan Alley and the kalaedoscopic revolution to come from ‘The Starman’.
2. ‘You Keep Me Hanging On’ – Vanilla Fudge
Is this the greatest cover of all time? It can’t be far off. It’s a sonic jar of coffee, it completes the heist by itself, and it puts you in the beer garden on a Saturday before you’ve even rolled out of bed. This song is the sort of mystic motivating fuel that gets the pub team to the cup final, marches the worker to the boss’ door, and brings the house down in a triumphant melee of shared jubilation.
The Supremes might have been masterful, but this reinvention puts their effort on speed and races towards the crescendo of the ‘60s like the penguins from Madagascar behind the wheel of a juggernaut. Why bother to meddle in the musicology when this anthem is simply all about attitude.
1. ‘To Love Somebody’ – Bee Gees
Nina Simone chose to not only tackle this track on her covers album in 1969 but she also chose to use it as the titular effort. With Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and The Byrds also featuring, Simone didn’t pick anything short of soaring masterpieces to match her considerable performative talents. Thus, it says a lot that the opus of ‘To Love Somebody’ is the gilded gem that she gleams up the most.
Since its release in 1967, the track is perhaps the most symbolic representation of the Bee Gees disco BC years. Championed by none other than Nick Cave as one of the greatest love songs of all time, the track is a dictionary definition of musical duende. And for those unaware of that Spanish word, Frederico Garcia Lorca described it as exalted emotion unearthed from within, “a mysterious force that everyone feels and no philosopher has explained. The roots that cling to the mire from which comes the very substance of art.” That might sound grandiose, but as the song asserts, what is there to be grandiose about if not love?
