(Noel Redding - life after The Experience was different)
Noel Redding is probably best known these days as the Bass player in the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In 1969, when Hendrix went off in different directions, Redding, and drummer Mitch Mitchell would go off and form other bands. Redding with Fat Matress (which he'd formed a year earlier as a sort of side project), and later The Noel Redding Band. And Mitchell with Ramatam. Neither achieved the astronomic heights during the Experience days, but perhaps it was the pressure and the expectation that made anything less than a Hendrix endeavor a dismal failure.
That just wasn't the case - both musicians were major talents in their own right and in the case of Noel Redding, Fat Mattress was a band that made some great music throughout its brief tenure.
This track, I Don't Mind comes off their first album. Admittedly, the songs are good but the production isn't. I remember when the American version of this album came out via Atlantic, the sound was muddy and the vocals sounded distant and badly mixed. The original version on Polydor in the UK fared a lot better, but it still lacked a dynamic sound, which was badly needed for a band like this.
At any rate, it's all hindsight. Fat Mattress were a good band that didn't get good breaks. But then, the barre was set pretty high.
And sorry for the fundraising intrusion but . . .the archives need shoes.
[gordon-donate]
