Reviews:
…until this quite wonderful book arrived I had absolutely no idea how central and important [the Strangelies] were to what must have been a unique and crucial late ‘60s, early ‘70s musical sub-culture in Dublin. And even more so, what a fabulous scene it must have been to be part of. What author/ ringmaster Adrian Whittaker has done so brilliantly is orchestrate first-person quotes from the band members and their close and long-lasting social circle into a mostly chronological saga. Like the band’s music back then, it just draws you straight in, like a paper time machine. Within a few moments you’ve side-stepped into another reality and are back in Dublin in the freewheeling late 1960s, in circles where art and literature, friendship and social living were all intertwined, where creativity was rampant. It’s genuinely can’t-put-downable, making you feel like you’re part of that ambience, among friends, right there.
It’s all incredibly and engagingly detailed, from personal relationships through musical evolutions to life on the road…. 300 large-format pages of pleasure and revelation. It’s among the most engaging music books of recent times, and I’d like to think that you’d love it as a story even if you knew next to nothing about them at the outset.
Ian Anderson, fRoots (see cutting below)
A deep psych safari into the Irish folk underground - 4 stars
Excellent... Whittaker’s book, like an epic MOJO article, is as interested in the curious British/Irish countercultural lives of its players, and their concomitant eccentricities. Never taking the individual band-members entirely at their word, Whittaker has fastidiously crafted a quirky snapshot of a vanished arcadia (with the picture research to prove it) that still contains a few red and green flashes of psychedelic wonder.
Andrew Male, Mojo
'The story is bigger than that of a band and their acid adventures at home or on tour… the musicians were essential for creating something distinct and special that went beyond the music... [The book] captures a sense not only of the hippy era at its most kaleidoscopically colourful but also a kind of bohemia of the mind… a thematic collage submerging the reader in the space of 1960s alternative Dublin, complete with a mass of archival photos…
One of the best alternative rock reads of recent years.
Katrina Dixon, The Wire (see cutting below)
[When I came back to Paris] I was very happy to find the Strangelies book - I read it and loved it. Also because it gave some sort of tangible reality to a music that had so long been a cypher to me. I was extremely honoured to be part of it.
Olivier Assayas, film director
'Dr Strangely Strange, Ireland’s answer to the Incredible String Band folk outfit, combined narcotically induced flights of mysticism with acoustic pastoral musings and a dose of surrealist absurdity… The music is easy on the ears yet erudite; it quotes from the Renaissance-era scholar Richard Burton and the rueful melancholy of Elizabethan love lyric.... Adrian Whittaker’s charming history of the band and its circle… is a collage-like impasto of impressions and often rather vague memories. The music, with its blend of 1960s jazz pop ballads and Dublin barroom folk, has worn well, and creates in the listener a near religious sense of communion and uplift.
Ian Thomson, The TLS
'An insightful view of one of the most magical folk (psych) rock groups of the time... an important addition to any decent Sixties music library and captures magical moments in words and pictures.’
Klemen Breznikar, It’s Psychedelic Baby
From Germany - Book of the month in Eclipsed Magazine
‘Brillant recherchiert… fantastische Fotos… auch Leser mit mittleren Englischkenntnissen ihre Freude an dem Buch haben werden. Top (und mutig)!’
Which means: ‘Brilliant research… fantastic photos… even readers with a medium knowledge of English will enjoy the book. Top (and courageous)!'
Alan Tepper, Eclipsed Magazine (see cutting below)
‘Exceptionally engaging acid-folk biogaphy, doubling as socio-cultural history'
'The definitive account of the era’s craziness, hijinks and musical cross-pollination… A superb collage of research and oral history… This will rank among 2019’s best rock reads.’
Kris Needs, Prog Mag (see cutting below)
'Strange but (mostly) true psych-folk memoirs' Five stars
'Synonymous in most heads’ heads with Island’s 1969 Nice Enough To Eat sampler, Dr Strangely Strange may strike the unenlightened as too meagre a topic upon which to base an entire book. However, [the book] is a rewardingly rich feast. The Strangelies’ main players – Ivan Pawle, Tim Goulding and Tim Booth – were/are unusually artistic and literate characters, whose idiosyncratic perspective and bohemian lifestyle would mark them out as “enigmatic” were it not for the personable, playful disposition which seemingly underscored their every thought, deed and utterance.
'Also, the picture painted of Dublin’s fecund counterculture scene, and the lot of itinerant musicians at the turn of the 70s as they barrel between polytechnics, folk clubs and arts labs, is as detailed and illuminating as any sociological tract – and a million times funnier/more poignant. Phil Lynott, Gary Moore, Joni Mitchell and The Incredible String Band drift through the narrative, set against a Withnailian backdrop of cold crash pads, disorderly road trips and hallucinogens.'
Oregano Rathbone, Record Collector (see cutting below)
'Wonderful illustrations - those atmospheric group shots and outtakes, the record sleeves, cartoons, posters, tickets and other bits of ephemera, all sublime. It's like a Mojo feature brilliantly sustained for 300 pages. A real labour of love. You want to dive into the pictures and join the band.'
Mark Ellen, former editor of Mojo and Word Magazine
5 Stars for the Cafe Oto gig and for the book
'...Adrian Whittaker's great, anecdote-laden book about the band, written with key members Tim Booth, Tim Goulding and Ivan Pawle.'
Simon Cosyns, The Sun
MUSIC BOOK OF THE FORTNIGHT
There’s something truly joyous about reading an oral history, especially about a band who seemed to have been cast into obscurity, to the extent that most people might only vaguely recall how important they were, especially in an Irish context. Adrian Whittaker’s aim is to put together the ‘puzzle’ of how the Irish psychedelic folksters known as Dr Strangely Strange got started back in the ’60s, and the integral role they played in a countercultural awakening in Dublin. In doing so, he features lengthy contributions from band members Ivan Pawle, Tim Booth and Tim Goulding. The result is a vivid, varied portrait of a particular time and place. Whittaker doesn’t search laboriously for the facts. He lets particular anecdotes capture the magic of the era and the music – and this is what makes Dr Strangely Strange: Fitting Pieces To The Jigsaw such a great read.
Peter McGoran, Hot Press (Ireland)
'Via reminiscences of socialising in Toners pub (“a pleasant watering hole with an indifferent pint” that hosted “the cream of Dublin’s avant-garde, writers, artists, musicians, poets, all still friends – or at least talking to each other”), gigs enhanced by light shows created by one Ashtar from Mars (who “grew some pot plants in one of the borders in St Stephen’s Green”), and their 1969 debut album, Kip of the Serenes (“an acquired taste”, Disc & Music Echo), the book is a cornucopia of evocative detail from that time. Festooned with images, lyrics, memorabilia, and reinforced with first-hand interviews from the main protagonists, this is a deep dive into a generally misunderstood Irish group that, notes BP Fallon, if they “weren’t entirely in tune or in time, were entirely in tune with the times."
Tony Clayton-Lea, The Irish Times
Four stars from Shindig!
The Incredible String Band really kicked the doors open in the late 60s, and the most obviously stringy of their many followers were undoubtedly Dublin’s brilliantly named Dr Strangely Strange. Writer and Shindig! contributor Adrian Whittaker is a fount of knowledge all things ISB, having penned the first and final word on them, beGlad. That he should tackle the similarly counter-culturally enhanced story of their forebears makes utter sense. [This] is essential reading for all acid-folk fans… following the protagonists’ stories from kids through to their heady emergence into the LSD-enhanced spawning ground of 1967 and eventual hook up with Joe Boyd and Witchseason. Naysayers may well say that DSS were the result of Boyd following his ISB formula as a cash-in, but for those who like such things that matters little. ‘The Orphanage’ was to DSS what 2400 Fulton St was to Jefferson Airplane, the band’s shared counter-cultural residence whose heady ambience, forward thinking mindset and psychedelic stimulation bore the music that was to follow. It’s key to this story, and delightfully told and illustrated. Numerous fellow Dublin heads crop up, including Phil Lynott and Gary Moore, as do hippie royalty and inspirations, and later collaborators, ISB. Grass, acid, intelligent youth, and the freedom to do what you want drive this coming of age tale. It’s all here. Heady, innocent days.
Jon ‘Mojo’ Mills, Shindig!
'The book is not just a history of DSS but of the Dublin music scene at the time: participants, musicians come and go, sometimes returning… A splendid read, there are some excellent stories throughout the book: touring Europe, touring with a horsebox, lysergic experiences, mushrooms and a comeuppance for the Edgar Broughton Band…
'Adrian Whittaker has done the band proud, letting them speak in their voices, remembering events slightly differently from each other. ‘There are no facts, only versions’ (of each other) as it says at the book’s beginning. I typed this up having just read the opening again and added the words ‘of each other.' Thus is memory changed. Read and enjoy.'
Hubert Rawlinson, The Afterword
'Heroic retrievals, digging and sifting the mists of memory, reveal the secret history of a Dublin band finding themselves, and the words and sounds of that city's emerging subterranean moment.'
Iain Sinclair, writer, psychogeographer and Dublin contemporary of the Strangelies.
'Adrian Whittaker has hacked through the undergrowth and rediscovered a forgotten wonderland of the weird folk underground. Rich in colourful half-memories and eccentric detail, this telling playfully reanimates a dormant British/Irish counterculture, with its dreams of the curiously curious and the abnormally odd.'
Rob Young, The Wire and author of Electric Eden.
'I strongly recommend this large, thoroughly researched and copiously illustrated book. Even if you’re not a great fan of Dr Strangely Strange, it offers a huge amount of information about Dublin in the 1960s, the emerging ‘acid folk’ orbit and so on.'
Richard Morton Jack, Flashback magazine
A delightful, evocative book… The band recall their career self-deprecatingly and often hilariously… Fabulous photos.
Trevor Hodgett, R'n'R Magazine
'A great read - you don't have to even know the music of Dr Strangely Strange to enjoy this evocation of a more innocent time and their often laugh-out-loud adventures... it powerfully conjures up Dublin in the 1960s and the awakening of the psychedelic years there... Adrian Whittaker brilliantly fleshes out the cast of characters surrounding the band... The book is full of marvellous photos from the band's glory years... the authentic voices of the members of the band make up the main body of the book... Dr Strangely Strange seem to have developed their own serious/comic philosophy of life, the universe and everything. The Tao of Dr Strangely Strange. Count me in!'
Sean Kelly, Goodreads
‘Für eingefleischte Fans der Band eine wahre Fundgrube.’ This means: ‘A real treasure trove for die-hard fans of the band.’
(I disagree about the ‘die-hard fans bit,’ btw – AW)
Christoph Wagner, Folker Magazine, Germany
‘Wer eine ungewöhnliche Geschichte über eine ungewöhnliche Band lesen will, findet sie in diesem Buch.’
This means: ‘If you want to read an unusual story about an unusual band, you will find it in this book.’
Good Times magazine, Germany
'...a book honouring their halcyon days... a detailed account of the Dublin scene centred around two high-end crash pads, known as the Orphanages'
Jim Wirth, Uncut magazine
Record Collector, Hot Press, Prog Mag, Eclipsed, The Wire, fRoots, TLS & Sun review cuttings below
…until this quite wonderful book arrived I had absolutely no idea how central and important [the Strangelies] were to what must have been a unique and crucial late ‘60s, early ‘70s musical sub-culture in Dublin. And even more so, what a fabulous scene it must have been to be part of. What author/ ringmaster Adrian Whittaker has done so brilliantly is orchestrate first-person quotes from the band members and their close and long-lasting social circle into a mostly chronological saga. Like the band’s music back then, it just draws you straight in, like a paper time machine. Within a few moments you’ve side-stepped into another reality and are back in Dublin in the freewheeling late 1960s, in circles where art and literature, friendship and social living were all intertwined, where creativity was rampant. It’s genuinely can’t-put-downable, making you feel like you’re part of that ambience, among friends, right there.
It’s all incredibly and engagingly detailed, from personal relationships through musical evolutions to life on the road…. 300 large-format pages of pleasure and revelation. It’s among the most engaging music books of recent times, and I’d like to think that you’d love it as a story even if you knew next to nothing about them at the outset.
Ian Anderson, fRoots (see cutting below)
A deep psych safari into the Irish folk underground - 4 stars
Excellent... Whittaker’s book, like an epic MOJO article, is as interested in the curious British/Irish countercultural lives of its players, and their concomitant eccentricities. Never taking the individual band-members entirely at their word, Whittaker has fastidiously crafted a quirky snapshot of a vanished arcadia (with the picture research to prove it) that still contains a few red and green flashes of psychedelic wonder.
Andrew Male, Mojo
'The story is bigger than that of a band and their acid adventures at home or on tour… the musicians were essential for creating something distinct and special that went beyond the music... [The book] captures a sense not only of the hippy era at its most kaleidoscopically colourful but also a kind of bohemia of the mind… a thematic collage submerging the reader in the space of 1960s alternative Dublin, complete with a mass of archival photos…
One of the best alternative rock reads of recent years.
Katrina Dixon, The Wire (see cutting below)
[When I came back to Paris] I was very happy to find the Strangelies book - I read it and loved it. Also because it gave some sort of tangible reality to a music that had so long been a cypher to me. I was extremely honoured to be part of it.
Olivier Assayas, film director
'Dr Strangely Strange, Ireland’s answer to the Incredible String Band folk outfit, combined narcotically induced flights of mysticism with acoustic pastoral musings and a dose of surrealist absurdity… The music is easy on the ears yet erudite; it quotes from the Renaissance-era scholar Richard Burton and the rueful melancholy of Elizabethan love lyric.... Adrian Whittaker’s charming history of the band and its circle… is a collage-like impasto of impressions and often rather vague memories. The music, with its blend of 1960s jazz pop ballads and Dublin barroom folk, has worn well, and creates in the listener a near religious sense of communion and uplift.
Ian Thomson, The TLS
'An insightful view of one of the most magical folk (psych) rock groups of the time... an important addition to any decent Sixties music library and captures magical moments in words and pictures.’
Klemen Breznikar, It’s Psychedelic Baby
From Germany - Book of the month in Eclipsed Magazine
‘Brillant recherchiert… fantastische Fotos… auch Leser mit mittleren Englischkenntnissen ihre Freude an dem Buch haben werden. Top (und mutig)!’
Which means: ‘Brilliant research… fantastic photos… even readers with a medium knowledge of English will enjoy the book. Top (and courageous)!'
Alan Tepper, Eclipsed Magazine (see cutting below)
‘Exceptionally engaging acid-folk biogaphy, doubling as socio-cultural history'
'The definitive account of the era’s craziness, hijinks and musical cross-pollination… A superb collage of research and oral history… This will rank among 2019’s best rock reads.’
Kris Needs, Prog Mag (see cutting below)
'Strange but (mostly) true psych-folk memoirs' Five stars
'Synonymous in most heads’ heads with Island’s 1969 Nice Enough To Eat sampler, Dr Strangely Strange may strike the unenlightened as too meagre a topic upon which to base an entire book. However, [the book] is a rewardingly rich feast. The Strangelies’ main players – Ivan Pawle, Tim Goulding and Tim Booth – were/are unusually artistic and literate characters, whose idiosyncratic perspective and bohemian lifestyle would mark them out as “enigmatic” were it not for the personable, playful disposition which seemingly underscored their every thought, deed and utterance.
'Also, the picture painted of Dublin’s fecund counterculture scene, and the lot of itinerant musicians at the turn of the 70s as they barrel between polytechnics, folk clubs and arts labs, is as detailed and illuminating as any sociological tract – and a million times funnier/more poignant. Phil Lynott, Gary Moore, Joni Mitchell and The Incredible String Band drift through the narrative, set against a Withnailian backdrop of cold crash pads, disorderly road trips and hallucinogens.'
Oregano Rathbone, Record Collector (see cutting below)
'Wonderful illustrations - those atmospheric group shots and outtakes, the record sleeves, cartoons, posters, tickets and other bits of ephemera, all sublime. It's like a Mojo feature brilliantly sustained for 300 pages. A real labour of love. You want to dive into the pictures and join the band.'
Mark Ellen, former editor of Mojo and Word Magazine
5 Stars for the Cafe Oto gig and for the book
'...Adrian Whittaker's great, anecdote-laden book about the band, written with key members Tim Booth, Tim Goulding and Ivan Pawle.'
Simon Cosyns, The Sun
MUSIC BOOK OF THE FORTNIGHT
There’s something truly joyous about reading an oral history, especially about a band who seemed to have been cast into obscurity, to the extent that most people might only vaguely recall how important they were, especially in an Irish context. Adrian Whittaker’s aim is to put together the ‘puzzle’ of how the Irish psychedelic folksters known as Dr Strangely Strange got started back in the ’60s, and the integral role they played in a countercultural awakening in Dublin. In doing so, he features lengthy contributions from band members Ivan Pawle, Tim Booth and Tim Goulding. The result is a vivid, varied portrait of a particular time and place. Whittaker doesn’t search laboriously for the facts. He lets particular anecdotes capture the magic of the era and the music – and this is what makes Dr Strangely Strange: Fitting Pieces To The Jigsaw such a great read.
Peter McGoran, Hot Press (Ireland)
'Via reminiscences of socialising in Toners pub (“a pleasant watering hole with an indifferent pint” that hosted “the cream of Dublin’s avant-garde, writers, artists, musicians, poets, all still friends – or at least talking to each other”), gigs enhanced by light shows created by one Ashtar from Mars (who “grew some pot plants in one of the borders in St Stephen’s Green”), and their 1969 debut album, Kip of the Serenes (“an acquired taste”, Disc & Music Echo), the book is a cornucopia of evocative detail from that time. Festooned with images, lyrics, memorabilia, and reinforced with first-hand interviews from the main protagonists, this is a deep dive into a generally misunderstood Irish group that, notes BP Fallon, if they “weren’t entirely in tune or in time, were entirely in tune with the times."
Tony Clayton-Lea, The Irish Times
Four stars from Shindig!
The Incredible String Band really kicked the doors open in the late 60s, and the most obviously stringy of their many followers were undoubtedly Dublin’s brilliantly named Dr Strangely Strange. Writer and Shindig! contributor Adrian Whittaker is a fount of knowledge all things ISB, having penned the first and final word on them, beGlad. That he should tackle the similarly counter-culturally enhanced story of their forebears makes utter sense. [This] is essential reading for all acid-folk fans… following the protagonists’ stories from kids through to their heady emergence into the LSD-enhanced spawning ground of 1967 and eventual hook up with Joe Boyd and Witchseason. Naysayers may well say that DSS were the result of Boyd following his ISB formula as a cash-in, but for those who like such things that matters little. ‘The Orphanage’ was to DSS what 2400 Fulton St was to Jefferson Airplane, the band’s shared counter-cultural residence whose heady ambience, forward thinking mindset and psychedelic stimulation bore the music that was to follow. It’s key to this story, and delightfully told and illustrated. Numerous fellow Dublin heads crop up, including Phil Lynott and Gary Moore, as do hippie royalty and inspirations, and later collaborators, ISB. Grass, acid, intelligent youth, and the freedom to do what you want drive this coming of age tale. It’s all here. Heady, innocent days.
Jon ‘Mojo’ Mills, Shindig!
'The book is not just a history of DSS but of the Dublin music scene at the time: participants, musicians come and go, sometimes returning… A splendid read, there are some excellent stories throughout the book: touring Europe, touring with a horsebox, lysergic experiences, mushrooms and a comeuppance for the Edgar Broughton Band…
'Adrian Whittaker has done the band proud, letting them speak in their voices, remembering events slightly differently from each other. ‘There are no facts, only versions’ (of each other) as it says at the book’s beginning. I typed this up having just read the opening again and added the words ‘of each other.' Thus is memory changed. Read and enjoy.'
Hubert Rawlinson, The Afterword
'Heroic retrievals, digging and sifting the mists of memory, reveal the secret history of a Dublin band finding themselves, and the words and sounds of that city's emerging subterranean moment.'
Iain Sinclair, writer, psychogeographer and Dublin contemporary of the Strangelies.
'Adrian Whittaker has hacked through the undergrowth and rediscovered a forgotten wonderland of the weird folk underground. Rich in colourful half-memories and eccentric detail, this telling playfully reanimates a dormant British/Irish counterculture, with its dreams of the curiously curious and the abnormally odd.'
Rob Young, The Wire and author of Electric Eden.
'I strongly recommend this large, thoroughly researched and copiously illustrated book. Even if you’re not a great fan of Dr Strangely Strange, it offers a huge amount of information about Dublin in the 1960s, the emerging ‘acid folk’ orbit and so on.'
Richard Morton Jack, Flashback magazine
A delightful, evocative book… The band recall their career self-deprecatingly and often hilariously… Fabulous photos.
Trevor Hodgett, R'n'R Magazine
'A great read - you don't have to even know the music of Dr Strangely Strange to enjoy this evocation of a more innocent time and their often laugh-out-loud adventures... it powerfully conjures up Dublin in the 1960s and the awakening of the psychedelic years there... Adrian Whittaker brilliantly fleshes out the cast of characters surrounding the band... The book is full of marvellous photos from the band's glory years... the authentic voices of the members of the band make up the main body of the book... Dr Strangely Strange seem to have developed their own serious/comic philosophy of life, the universe and everything. The Tao of Dr Strangely Strange. Count me in!'
Sean Kelly, Goodreads
‘Für eingefleischte Fans der Band eine wahre Fundgrube.’ This means: ‘A real treasure trove for die-hard fans of the band.’
(I disagree about the ‘die-hard fans bit,’ btw – AW)
Christoph Wagner, Folker Magazine, Germany
‘Wer eine ungewöhnliche Geschichte über eine ungewöhnliche Band lesen will, findet sie in diesem Buch.’
This means: ‘If you want to read an unusual story about an unusual band, you will find it in this book.’
Good Times magazine, Germany
'...a book honouring their halcyon days... a detailed account of the Dublin scene centred around two high-end crash pads, known as the Orphanages'
Jim Wirth, Uncut magazine
Record Collector, Hot Press, Prog Mag, Eclipsed, The Wire, fRoots, TLS & Sun review cuttings below