Fat Mattress was the band’s debut LP (they only released one more, in 1970) and it squeaked onto the charts, going to #134 on the US album chart. The sole single, “Magic Forest,” a funky little ass-shaker with trippy hippie lyrics, charted but only in the Netherlands at #11. Less funky and even more trippy English countryside twee (think fairies, gnomes, Stonehenge – you know what I mean) is “Walking Through a Garden” but honestly the whole record is just dripping in late 60’s vibes. It opens with the flute-forward track “All Night Drinker,” the flute performed by Chris Wood, founding member of Traffic. I didn’t know that until I just now looked it up but even before I could hear the Traffic influence woven through much of the rest of the record. “I Don’t Mind” feels like a mashup of Amboy Duke’s “Journey to the Center of the Mind” and all Beatles releases from ’67-’69. “Bright New Way” has an Americana-Grateful Dead-hippie (less twee, more twang) while “Everything’s Blue” leans jangly hard blues rock…a little Them influence maybe. We picked up Fat Mattress at a record store in Appleton (Eroding Winds) over Labor Day weekend – this one might not be staying long in our collection.

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