Psychedelicatessen

FAT MATTRESS     Fat Mattress were a short-lived, bluesy Psychedelic Pop band led by Noel Redding (1945-2003), best-known as the frizzy-haired bassist with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. The first Fat Mattress album was a modest success, but the second album was cast away like an old mattress with rusty springs by the record-buying public and the band decided to go their separate ways in late 1970.

 1969: Fat Mattress - Fat Mattress - http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mavMSy-XG2-_ANqYU0te6JV7ZHfK_qiks

 1970: Fat Mattress - Fat Mattress II - http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mx3yAfYYU1B4Jc2_Vol0dmwq_-BQCYgek

FAR EAST FAMILY BAND      The Japanese Pink Floyd! Far East Family Band are one of two legendary Japanese psych bands (the other one being Flower Travellin' Band), which features none other than Kitaro and Hirohito Fukushima. They're atomic! 

I've never actually been to the Far East (not even the Far East End of London) but I do have a black belt third dan in ikebana and origami. 

FANTASY      Is this the real life, or is this just fantasy..... Miami-based band Fantasy must have wished they could escape from reality back in 1969 when their lead singer went missing and then turned up dead!  Black clouds and silver linings though, because the band then went out and hired 16-year-old Lydia Janene Miller, a kick-ass singer with a rough powerful voice in the tradition of Janis Joplin and Grace Slick. Fantasy's one and only album sadly went nowhere though, falling off the radar like a flaming lead zeppelin. The band broke up shortly after the album's release, but they weren't quite through yet as they reunited and started all over again in a band called Year One. 

Fantasy - They came, they saw, they conked out. 

THE FALCONS    Apparently, The Falcons are from Germany, although you'd never guess from the lead singer's crystal-clear English accent, so there's no chance of him being Misunderstood. Intriguingly though, on the back of the album cover, two of the band members are listed as being from "Schottland", which I presume is German for Scotland. 

THE FACTORY      They say good things come in small packages, so make the most of The Factory's 6-track EP, because it'll be over before you know it, but should you wish to explore the UK Freakbeat scene further, you can also find Path Through the Forest on the Chocolate Soup for Diabetics compilation. 

EYES OF BLUE     An outstanding Welsh psych band who came together at the Crossroads of Time in Port Talbot back in 1968, being quite possibly the best thing to emerge from South Wales since Tom Jones, Shirley Bassey, Richard Burton and Hannibal Lecter. 

EUGENE CARNAN     Not an American singer, but a 3-piece  band who mined a rich vein of bluesy psych from the Rhondda Valley in South Wales where they're allergic to vowels. Yaki da. 

ESTES BROTHERS      Real-life brothers Joe, John & Jerry Estes from Lodi in O-Hio. 

ERIC    A psych band from Marion, Ohio, possibly named in honour of a certain Guitar God, possibly not. It's in the way that you interpret it.