Dr. Strangely Strange were an experimental Irish folk group, formed in Dublin in 1967 by Tim Booth (born 6 September 1943, County Kildare, Ireland), vocals and guitar, and Ivan Pawle (born 17 August 1943, England) bass and keyboards.
Booth and Pawle soon teamed with multi-instrumentalist Tim Goulding (born 15 May 1945, Hatch Street, Southside, Dublin), vocals and keyboards, at that time an aspiring painter, and percussionist/vocalist Caroline "Linus" Greville, and began living and rehearsing in a house owned by Goulding's girlfriend, backing vocalist "Orphan Annie" Mohan, which its tenants nicknamed "The Orphanage". The Orphanage became a springboard for a new generation of Irish rock, helping launch the careers of Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott, Gary Moore and others. After signing with the Incredible String Band's producer and manager Joe Boyd, Dr. Strangely Strange debuted in 1969 with Kip of the Serenes. The album was produced by Boyd. (Read more at Wikipedia)
Links to Peel[]
Dr. Strangely Strange were closely associated with Peel favourites the Incredible String Band and their producer Joe Boyd, so it may be surprising that they were "one-session wonders" on Top Gear and never appeared on Night Ride, which often featured folk and acoustic artists in session. But Kip of the Serenes, released by Island Records at the same time as Nick Drake's debut LP Five Leaves Left, was negatively reviewed in Melody Maker ("creeping ennui sets in with numbing effect")[1], and Peel may have shared this view, as no show plays can be found in currently available tracklistings from 1969. It was also released a few weeks before the "son of Night Ride" show was taken off the air - perhaps too late for them to be booked for a session.
After seeing Dr. Strangely Strange at the Dublin Arts Festival in April 1970, Peel was enthusiastic enough to book them for a session for Top Gear. It was broadcast on 06 June 1970 and included three songs from their second LP, Heavy Petting; on the album, they were augmented by musicians such as Gary Moore and Brendan "Brush" Shiels of Skid Row, and Fairport Convention drummer Dave Mattacks and it received some good reviews in the music press. Later that year they were also introduced by Peel on a Sunday In Concert show, sharing the bill with the subsequently far more famous James Taylor.
They split up in 1971, without having achieved any commercial success, and according to Sheila Ravenscroft in Margrave Of The Marshes (ref.) she and/or Peel later donated a Dr. Strangely Strange LP to a local playgroup, together with an album by the highly obscure Public Foot The Roman. The band reformed in the 1990s, in the wake of the revival of interest in the Incredible String Band and other "psychedelic folk" artists, and released a third album in 1996, but there is no evidence of Peel having played anything from it on his shows.
Festive Fifty Entries[]
- None
Sessions[]
One session. No known commercial release.
1. Recorded: 1970-05-26. First broadcast: 06 June 1970. Repeated: 17 October 1970
- Jove Was At Home / Ashling / Mary Malone of Moscow
Live[]
- 01 November 1970 (concert show, with James Taylor)
- Frosty Mornings
- Horse Of A Different Hue
- On The West Cork Hack
- Ballad Of The Wasps
- Sweet Red Rape
Other Shows Played[]
Strangely Strange But Oddly Normal by Dr Strangely Strange
- 1970
- 10 October 1970: Gave My Love An Apple (LP - Heavy Petting) Vertigo
- 2000
- 10 October 2000: (JP discussing recent gig at the Royal Festival Hall: “At one stage when The Increds were playing, because that’s what old hippies like myself called The Incredible String Band, while they were playing I was sitting talking to a fella at the edge of the stage and he mentioned Dr. Strangely Strange. Now that was a band and you don’t often here their name in polite conversation nowadays (you didn’t back then either to be honest) and he said their LP Kip Of The Serenes was a bit of a rare record, a bit of a collector’s item and that seemed like as flimsy a reason as I need to play you a track from it.”)
Strangely Strange But Oddly Normal (LP: Kip Of The Serenes) Island
See Also[]
References[]
- ↑ Quoted in Patrick Humphries, Nick Drake: The Biography (London: Bloomsbury 1998, paperback edition), p.102.