Are you new to the Sisterverse? Ever
wonder
what's behind some of the phrases you hear on
the SS mailing list? Ever wonder how to
pronounce Siobhan's NAME?! This page has the
answers.
Q) Shakespear's Sister:
what is it?
A) Shakespear's Sister is (or was) a
pop-glam band started by Siobhan Fahey (who
used to be in Bananarama) and which consisted
mainly of Siobhan and Marcella Detroit, with
their backup band Gully, Clare Kenny, Chuck
Sabo and Carrie Booth. Marcella left the
band in 1993 but Siobhan and the band are
still recording under the Shakespear's Sister
name. Most websites for the band focus on
their heyday, when Marcella was part of the
band. You can read much more on the bands'
history in the articles section of this
site,
and on Neil
Goward's SS Info Page.
Q) Where did the band's
name come from?
A) A long twisty story. The English author
Virginia Woolf invented "Judith", a fictional
sister of William Shakespeare in a feminist
essay called "A Room Of One's Own." In the
1980s the punk band the Smiths (Siobhan
Fahey's favorite band) wrote a song titled
"Shakespeare's Sister", which is where
Siobhan took it from.
Q) Why does everyone
keep misspelling
Shakespeare?! And where's the apostrophe
mark? Sloppy, sloppy...
A) Actually, it's supposed to be like
that. A friend, creating a logo for the band
in the early days, misspelt the bard's name
and the band kept the mistake to distinguish
themselves. The apostrophe is sometimes
used, depending on how much of an anal-
grammatic your webmaster is. :-) Siobhan
herself has said she prefers it without the
apostrophe, so out of courtesy to her, most
fans drop it as well.
Q) The two women look
identical. Which
one's which?
A) Siobhan has long black hair in most
pictures you will see on websites, though in
the early days of the band she had it
shorter. Marcella is the one with the short
bob that was one-sided during the 1992/93
era. Marcella's also the one with the
guitar, though Siobhan can be seen playing
one in later video clips. The giveaway is
their voices. Siobhan is the one with the
low husky voice, Marcella is the one with the
high operatic voice.
Q) How DO you pronounce
Siobhan's name,
anyway?!
A) It's an Irish name, and it's pronounced
Shu-vawn. Lots of people on the SS mailing
list call her by her nickname, which is Shuv.
Other famous Siobhans: Siobhan Fallon,
Siobhan McKenna (both actresses)....and as
anyone who's ever searched for Siobhan Fahey
on a search engine knows, there's a witch
named Nushae Siobhan Fahey who's got a
webpage of 101 spells not worth memorizing.
:-)
Q) What is Siobhan
rapping about in "I Don't
Care"...and in "Emotional Thing", and other
SS songs?
A) Good question. Um, really good
question...no one's really sure. Well, we do
know that the "poem" Siobhan recites halfway
thru "I Don't Care" is a spin on Edith
Sitwell's poem, "The Hornpipe". There is a
very good article on Neil
Goward's page (in
the Fanzine section, issue 2, I believe)
about Edith Sitwell's life and how the
original poem came to be. Here's the
Sisters' version, as well as can be made
out:
"In a borealic iceberg came
Victoria
Queen Victoria sitting shocked upon the
rocking horse of a wave
Said to the laureate;
'This minx of course is sharp as any
lynx
And blacker, deeper than the drinks
As any hottentot
Without remorse
But the minx is she
and the drinks you can see
Are hot as any hottentot
And not the goods for me.
Hot as any hottentot
And not the goods for me."
That's how I heard it, thought I could be
wrong. As for the "Emotional Thing" poem, no
one has said where that's from, if anywhere.
Here's what I heard:
"And the sky sucked me up into its
????
The air was sweet
Over and over with your damn Matterhorn of
excess
Into the daffodils
By the black swan and that ugly dress
(unintelligible lyric)
Do you dream of success?"
It seems like this most certainly must be
another interpretation of another poem or
literary work. This, I think is one of the
hallmarks of Shakespear's Sister: the fact
that they were so literary, that they
did quote all these famous authors and
didn't dumb themselves down for the public --
yeah, only English majors know who Virginia
Woolf is, so what? Cool.
Q) Where can I send my
obsessively gushing fan mail to Siobhan and
Marcella?!
A) Now, behave. :) Marcella can be reached
via
E-mail at her website
. Lots of people I know have gotten
reasonable responses from her. As for Siobhan, the awesome John Jennings has acquired a fax number to send letters to Siobhan at! He has kindly made a fax form available to everyone at this page. Thanks John! :)
Hope some of your questions were answered. A
great,
GREAT place for SS info is the Shakespear's
Sister Mailing List Archive. Many times
I've posted a question on the mailing list,
then gone to the archive, only to see it had
been discussed months ago...whoops! It takes
a while to pore over all of them, but I
highly recommend it.
"...As one riddle closes, another
opens..."
Okay. So we all know who Shakespear's
Sister
was, and we all know how Siobhan came to
choose the name, and we all know it was a
Smiths song. Now I ask the burning question:
What the FLIP is this song about?!! What has
this got to do with Judith Shakespeare or
Virginia Woolf or anything?!
Even Siobhan calls it "a lesser work". For
all we
know it could be the most profound song ever
written, or it could be Morrisey thumbing his
nose at all of us. (It very well
could, at
that.) Here are the lyrics as well as I've
been able to hear them, read and decipher for
yourself:
"Shakespeare's Sister"
by The Smiths
Young bones groan
and the rocks below say
"Throw your skinny body down son"
But I'm going to meet the one I
love
So please don't stand in my way
I'm going to meet the one I love
No mama let me go
Young bones groan
and the rocks below say
"throw your white body down"
But I'm going to meet the one I love
At last at last at last
I'm going to meet the one I love
let it out let it out
No mama let me go
I thought that if you had an acoustic
guitar
then it meant that you were
a protest singer
Oh I can smile about it now
but at the time it was terrible
No mama let me go
(Special thanx to Nickirain for supplying the
mystery lyric...protest singer!
:-)
Is there a really obvious question I'm
missing on this FAQ? Please feel free to
let me
know.
>^..^<
