Sidhe Walks In Beauty

The Rock Rag, November 2003
Cover Article "Here Sidhe Comes"

by Colin Graham

This interviewer had a chance to sit down with the rock band “Sidhe Walks In Beauty” before the kick-off of the North American tour for their album “Unseelie Court”. In case you’ve been living under a mushroom cap while this British sensation has taken off, Sidhe is pronounced “Shee” and is the Gaelic word for fey or fairy.

I met the three guy, one girl band at New York’s swank Casablanca Hotel. Leanan looked amazing in a little flowing blue number, while the boys Pooka, Spriggan and Boggie were all decked out in black grunge finery. The first thing I asked was, of course, “Why Sidhe?”

Spriggan replied, “Why the [expletive] do you [expletive] think, you [expletive]? We’re [expletive] fey!”

Leanan broke in with her usual charm, “And the band name is a reference to a Lord Byron poem. Since Byron is a personal friend it seemed like a nice tribute.” (When I mentioned that Byron had been dead for some time the band reassured me that he was in fact enjoying time with some friends at a fairie ring in Northern Ireland where time passes slowly and was in quite good health.)

Pooka, who had been glowering at me, spoke up. “We looked at those rock bands tearing up their hotel rooms, luring young people away from their homes to follow them, having sex with everyone within five feet of them, and we thought, what a rip-off! We’ve been acting like that for thousands of years and now some mortal brats are going to come along and make money at it? [Expletive]!”

Of course, over the years there has been the odd fairy to gain popularity in entertainment. Bryan Ferry, the son of a dryad, was a 1980s pop sensation and right now Tina Fey, a nymph, does the news on Saturday Night Live.

When I asked her about this, Leanan mused, “Tina has done a good job of toning down her natural allure. There is a real pressure as a sidhe where you wonder if you can make it without your glamour – if you can just succeed on your own hard work.”

Well, it’s certain that this great band is making it on their own hard work. Check out Sidhe Walks in Beauty coming soon to a town near you!

(c) 2003, Sue London, – November 2003 Bad Fairy Challenge for the Science Fiction Writer's Online Writer's Workshop