Mary Boys Band

Beginning of the band - The Mary's story

        It all started at the Mathematical High School in Burgas, when the school’s band was looking for a keyboardist. They offer the position to Mary, as she has played the piano for eight years. She begins to play in the group, but afterwards decides to leave and performs at high-school concerts, where she sings her own songs and plays the piano. Her place is taken by her classmate, Ilian, who is still the keyboardist in the group. At a concert, the guitarist of the former school band, Miroslav, joins them and that is how they gather on stage for the first time.
        Later, almost simultaneously, all of them leave for Sofia, to study. Soon after this, a friend of theirs, Disho, who plays in Vania Kostova’s band, tells them that she is looking for musicians. The group starts playing with Vania and gradually becomes famous. For the first time they play with her in December, 1993, in “The Country Club”. They begin to play gigs on their own there as well. It is the first musical club in Sofia then.
 The first couple of times they don’t have a name and ask the audience for suggestions, but nothing really comes out of that. Finally, their sound manager, Dizho, proposes “Mary Boys Band” and they like it.
        In the summer of 1994, they win in a television competition for young performers, “Hit Minus One”, with a cover of Vaya Con Dios’s “What’s a woman”. Soon it becomes clear, that if they want to evolve they’ll need a bassist and a drummer.
Around then, during a gig for the presidential elections in the autumn of 1994, they meet Suki and Joro from “Atlas”. Joro Siderov is a vocalist, but also a very good drummer and Asen Lazarov – Suki is a bassist. All of them want to make good music and Joro and Suki are excited about playing live at the clubs.
         On January 28, 1995, after a few rehearsals, Mary Boys Band plays live as a group of five people for the first time. The gig is again in “The Country Club” and this is the birthday of the band is as well.
They play with Suki and Joro until the end of 1995. Joro wants to go abroad and tries to convince the rest of the group to come with him. They have offers to play in Greenland and Scandinavia, but the other members want to stay in Bulgaria.
         During the period with Suki and Joro they record two songs for the Bulgarian National Radio. “An attempt to fly” and the first version of “To outrun the birds”. The radio likes the tracks and they get a lot of airplay. Maybe because of this, in 1996 Mary Boys Band win Art Rock Center’s award for Best Band.
         The following years the group changes many drummers. After the departure of Joro comes Elvis Georgiev, then Venelin Venkov, again Joro, again Elvis… For a year they play with Bozho Trenkov, for a year and a half with Decho Mutafchiev, and another year and a half with Nicky Ivanov. Nicky graduates and leaves to study in Germany, while the group continues to play with Bozho Trenkov on the drums. There’s another change in the summer of 1997, when Suki is replaced by Stefan Chobanov.
         In 1997 German producers invite the band to work on a project and they record songs by Deep Purple, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin with an orchestra. They also play abroad on ferries traveling between Switzerland, Germany, England and Holland.
         In 2001 finally they release the album “Distant streets”. It includes ten songs, recorded between 1999 and 2001. The tracks are different, depending on the period they are recorded in. This is influenced by the different drummers and by the time the rest of the band has had to evolve. At the beginning, Mary Boys Band is a club group and the songs are affected by the way the group plays live. They produce themselves too. Songs such as “To outrun the birds”, “Vanity” and “A whole moment” are like that. From them, “To outrun the birds” becomes the most famous one. “A whole moment” is “ska”, which suits its party lyrics.
Polysound likes the band and signs a deal with them. From the second period, in “Sky” studio, are the songs “Like the night”, “No man’s land” and “The mirror”. Two years later, they enter again the studio and finish the album.
         The most famous song on the album becomes the title song itself, “Unknown streets”. It stays in the charts for a record-breaking time.
         The album is doing very well and they are nominated at the Bulgarian Radio Awards for five different categories: “BG Debut”, “BG Album”, “BG Song”, “BG Lyrics” and for a new version of a song for “Autumn”.
         In June, 2002, they participate in a festival for live music, which is part of the international television festival in Albena, and win first place, as voted by the public.
Now Mary Boys Band is one of the famous Bulgarian bands.