Artist description Diverse powerhouse trio out of Vancouver, Canada. Equal parts melody and noise.

Music Style Heavy-progressive Alt-rock

Similar Artists Hüsker Dü, Cream, NoMeansNo, Stooges, Stiff Little Fingers, Killing Joke, [and none of the above!]

Artist History MARY was formed in the summer of 1988 by Michael Lewis (bass/vocals), Deviant (guitar/vocals), and John Jansen (drums/vocals) out of the ashes of the short-lived Six Inches. Shortly after recording Virginal, Lewis left to pursue an acting career. Deviant and Jansen recruited John Maxwell, cementing the Mary sound. They quickly recorded and released the 3-song Roy’s Head, finding an immediate surge in local interest as well as college radio play across Canada. During Mary’s tenure as a local staple, the band opened shows for Alice Donut, Bad Religion, L7, Lemonheads, NoMeansNo, D.O.A., Swans, Sons of Freedom and the legendary Art Bergmann. Mary began recording the album What Never Was late in 1990 with producer John Wright (of NoMeansNo) and veteran engineer Cecil English. Work on the album was sporadic throughout 1991. Meanwhile, the band toured Canada and the Pacific Northwest, schmoozing with college radio stations and being featured on a MuchMusic segment. After returning to Vancouver, they recorded the live Day Of Infamy in December of 1991. Maxwell left in 1992 shortly after the completion of What Never Was and the band quickly disintegrated in a spiral of personal and financial problems. Deviant relocated to Chicago, and occasionally performs and records with various acts. An unexpected set of circumstances placed all three members of the classic Mary line-up in Chicago in the fall of 1998. An improvised session was recorded after attending a Bauhaus reunion show. The tape was remixed and edited the following year and was released with a remastered version of Roy’s Head on the Necromaniac CD in 2000.

Group Members John Jansen (drums), John Maxwell (bass), Deviant (guitar)

Instruments guitar, bass, drums, whatever else is handy

Albums Virginal (1988), Roy's Head (1989 EP), Day of Infamy (1991), What Never Was (1992), Necromaniac (2000)

Press Reviews OLD CLIPPINGS: . . . another pleasant surprise . . . noise without sacrificing hooks and melody, and dynamics without losing power . . . it's rare to hear something sound so clean and contagious while evil and noisy (Discorder, July 1990). . . it's no easy task, though, to slack off and pigeonhole this trio to a certain style of music: sometimes they're loud, sometimes quiet, sometimes a little of both, sometimes neither. This is a band that has confidence in their brand of "overblown electric folk music" . . . [after] endless gigging around town and on Vancouver Island, the band has garnered a reputation for playing smart music with Deviant's lyrics providing a suitable backdrop to the energy. Their latest effort, three songs that had John Wright of NoMeansNo fame in the producer's chair, sounds more focused than their earlier material, prompting quite a bit of attention from local alternative radio outlets (The West Ender, July 26, 1990). . . there’s no doubt that Mary's found their niche in the scene, playing songs almost as loud and hard as they can get without losing all traces of melody (Discorder, April 1990) . . . down in the farm leagues, promising upstarts were conspicuously absent in 1989 from the usually verdant Vancouver scene, T.T. Racer, Mary, and Green House were the notable exceptions (Music Express, February 1990). . . going by their name, I expected Mary to be some black-clad death-rock dirgey band, but no. Straight ahead rock and roll with drums/guitar/bass . . . kinda Echo & the Bunnymen meet the Dead Kennedys (Discorder, September 1989) . . . a new local trio currently making waves with a barrage of demos in recent months. Influences are diverse, with textures of songs varying widely, but Hüsker Dü or Killing Joke come to mind the most (Discorder, July 1989) . . . The Roy's Head EP by Mary has that rawness I was talking about. Deviant, the band's guitarist, plays/slashes fast and hard; bassist John Maxwell and drummer John Jansen aren't Victorian in their approaches, either. The highlight is "Big Fishes", a tune that devolves (and that's a compliment) from power pop to industrial mayhem [and] concludes with a runaway double-time passage that's part Cream, part Stooges, and all sonic pleasure (Georgia Straight, June 1989) . . . almost straight off there's the line "you think I care but I don't give a flying fuck", that should be written down in some list of great rock and roll lyrics. [The song] "Him" is rough-edged pop, nicely produced and performed, but NOT wimpy (Discorder, June 1989). . . the music [on Virginal] is quite varied. Some of this stuff is quite progressively oriented, quite ambitious in their arrangements and attention to sound and moods. Some of it is quite well done (and some of it’s a little half-baked, y’know). The song Police Hunt intrigues me the most (Tom Harrison on CFOX, November 21, 1988) . . . Mary is a band with a new release entitled Virginal. As on stage, the guitar really stands out, whether gently pealing or sharply rocking . . . there's more that enough talent and eclectic touches to make the band sound very promising (Georgia Straight, October 1988)

Location Vancouver, BC - Canada

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