Lost Innocence Vast Ego
No doubt this is the most hard and powerfull latvian rock band! mary jane was formed in 1995 in Riga's old town. Just like the old town itself, the band has slowly but surely progressed. Many people have different interpretations when they first hear the band name mary jane. Some conjure up images of a band totally stoned playing mellow music. Others may just think that Mary was one of the band member's first love. When asking some of the band members the reason, they themselves are not quite sure and respond with different answers - "We are individuals, with different qualities and experiences, but on the same path", or "sounded good at the time". Who knows. But one thing that is known, is that when you get to know the band and their music, you realise that the band loves their music, and that it is like a drug to them. The group plays hard rock that can even turn unaware listeners into addicts. About the album songs: casablanca this song was meant for a special occasion - an acoustic concert in a club called casablanca. that's where its name originated from. funny thing is we should have played this gig together with kuba, so we wrote it as a joke to "compete" with kuba's instrumental music. The concert never happened, but we are thankful to our friends from kuba for the inspiration, and the club for this track's name... through the doors one of our first radio singles. while playing it live, ernests and janis always have the feeling that people are getting annoyed by the end of the song. aren't you people?;) let me out back in 2000-2001 this was the greatest song to play in concerts. the secret of its popularity is probably in the non-articulated lyrics. instead of the classic "hop-hop" or "la la la", we used our new formula "hoooohoooo", which turned out to be catchy as hell. Even the ones who can't sing seem to sing "hooooohooooo" better than us. "I DIDN'T GET YOU RIGHT!" salvation this is where our story began. the first radio single... if you still remember this story - you have to read the section "special thanks to special fans" - it's meant for you. cheerz!:) "JUST LIKE YOUR LATVIAN EYES" old as ernests once announced - this is a song for all kinds of people - and that's it! you can't deny his logic - we all are different but we all are getting older. Though he is singing mostly about getting bald... and it doesn't bother you that much, does it ladies? "SENSE IS MY JOB" girl this is a song about a classic topic (or one can say - classic values), and so, sure enough, we wanted to give it a classic touch. To do so we decided to add the beatles scream to the song. Well, we tried screaming smoothly and nicely, and it still doesn't sound like the beatles... damn it... "LOVE IS UNFAIR" no one no one really knows that this song was originally supposed to be a very happy tune called "she is my adorer". Also, no one really knows why out of the blue, janis decided to rename it to "no one" and change it to minor chords to make this song as dark as hell. But there is no one in the band who doesn't like the way it sounds now. international cow congress in salzburg this long title was actually stolen by us from a beautiful t-shirt ernests once had. The phrase was so long and so wonderful that we decided that we must have a song called this. (by the way - ernests fell asleep during the recording, as it was around 5 a.m. when we did this take... or was the song that boring?) "I'M JUST A COW WITHOUT A SHEPPARD, BEGGING CROWD TO MOVE AROUND" gasoline originally "gasoline" was meant to be a song about the lives of farmers in the usa, and the lyrics was something like "is it kansas, detroit or new orleans?". But later on we understood that city boys like us know nothing about the country life, so we chose a more neutral and natural topic. Why gasoline? Because it was a demagoguery in the very beginning anyway. "SELF IS THE GREATEST FORM OF UNIFORM" merkuzio "merkuzio" was inspired by shakespeare's immortal tragedy of romeo and juliet. well.. by romeo's friend mercutio actually, who was murdered because of the love between those two lunatic teenagers. but sure, sure - "for never was a story of more woe than this of juliet and her romeo". "A PLAGUE O' BOTH YOUR HOUSES" get me although this song is about book-reading, it is recognized that knowledge can limit your perception. by the way by the way, this is a second reincarnation of this song. Once upon a time, we made "by the way", and we hated it so much, that we decided never to play it again.. So the song was forgotten for about a year or more, until it somehow resurfaced, this time without any regrets. ... sometimes it takes time to like things better... smash it before "smash it" became what it is now, it was just a let's play that kinda smashing pumpkins stuff. So when it finally became a song and we needed lyrics for it, janis decided to leave part of its "original" name for the other band members to know better what song it is. Thus, this is kind of our little tribute to the great band.