Wednesday, October 14, 2009

The Fat Mattress



Hey, I forgot to mention in my Globe Poster posting an important detail about this Jimi Hendrix poster...namely, the band listed in the lower right as the support act: The Fat Mattress. Despite the dumb name, which sounds like some jam band, the Fat Mattress is actually a rather significant band for Hendrix completists, as it was the folk-rock side group Noel Redding formed during his time as the bassist in the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

According to Wikipedia, Redding formed the group in 1968 in Folkestone, England, with vocalist Neil Landon. Redding played guitar and also sang, with the band rounded out by multi-instrumentalist Jim Leverton and drummer Eric Dillon. The band released two albums, Fat Mattress (1969) and Fat Mattress II (1970), before splitting up in 1970.



According to a reviewer of their first album on Amazon,
"What the listener got with Fat Mattress was a solid, sometimes folky/woodsy, sometimes mystical rock band - very English and very stripped down, without pyrotechnics or pretensions. Songs like "Mr. Moonshine," "She Came In the Morning" and "All Night Drinker" (with Chris Wood of Traffic fame lending his flute, giving the song a style similar to early Jethro Tull) could have been staples on FM radio had the album been properly promoted. If you're at all into this type of music and wish to hear some of the little post-Experience music available by the late Noel Redding, you owe it to yourself to dig for this one."


Related Links:
Richie Unterberger's Bio of Fat Mattress (allmusicguide)
Fat Mattress (Wikipedia)

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