For those who haven’t noticed I’ve added a little sale offer for Christmas, only available until December 23rd. You can get 3 Cloudberry Cake Kitchen CDs for the price of 2. All available titles are part of this promotion. So if you are missing any of them, this is a good opportunity. Bear in mind that there are few copies of Strange Idols, so if by any reason they sell out, well, bad luck! Check this promotion on the Cloudberry website.

The Beths: the amazing New Zealand band has two new songs on their Bandcamp and they are about Christmas! So if you are feeling in the mood of holiday season, do check out “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” and “Happy Unhappy”!!

The Reds, Pinks & Purples: yet another demo song by this superb project by the San Francisco band. I can’t wait for the properly recorded versions of all the songs the band keeps publishing in their Bandcamp. Their latest is called “What’s in your DNA?” and it is a lovely slice of janglepop!

True Sleeper: Italian shoegaze! The song “Blurred Hears” is now available to stream from the label Lady Sometimes, the same label that a week ago was giving us their Italian Sarah tribute. This sounds pretty good. Looking forward to more songs.

Control Room: this Hattlesburg, Mississippi, band sounds pretty cool. Definitely influenced by post-punk and synthpop, they do have a very nice pop sensibility when making their songs. That is what I like! There are four songs in their “Retreat” cassette EP, “Shield”, “Ground Rules”, “War” and “No Zeros”.

Rilev: the last year we’ve find out so many good Mexican bands. Rilev being the latest one I discover. Their dreamy songs are part of a digital EP that includes 5 songs, “Intro”, “Control”, “Vampira”, “Antes” and “Amar”. I wonder though, when I’ve visited Mexico City, never seen any of these bands performing. Will I do one day?

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It has been a while since a New Zealand band was featured on the blog. I think since the Exploding Budgies? I did try to interview them and sent questions, but sadly I haven’t heard back yet. Hopefully one day I’ll get those answers. That’d be great. Still I think it is good time to check out an obscure guitar pop band from New Zealand.

I would love to know why they named themselves Mainly Spaniards. Was there any connection with Spain? Has there been a Spanish immigration to New Zealand? Would be interesting to find out. What we do know about them is that their legacy is a 7″ and a couple of compilation appearances, nothing more.

The good thing is that their 7″ came out on Flying Nun (FN014), that means, I hope, we’ll be able to find some interesting information about them. An important label gives us that possibility.Though I must say I don’t remember this band being mentioned on the book Roger Shepherd published a few years ago.

The “That’s What Friends are For” 7″ included three songs. On the A side we find “That’s What Friends are For” credited to Richard James. The B side has “Secretaries’ Lunch Break” and “Questions”. We know that the band was formed by Nick Strong on bass, Dave Swift on bass, Mike Jeffries on guitar and Richard James on vocals and guitar. All songs on the record were produced by Chris Knox from the Tall Dwarfs and many more and Doug Hood who was one of The Clean’s original members.

500 copies were pressed for this record and we know there were 3 colour sleeve variations, pink, lemon and red. They were designed by Rudolph Boelee who had Groucho on the cover.

The compilation appearances that are listed for them are way more recent. Just from a decade ago. Their A side “That’s What Friends Are For” appears on the “Christchurchthemusic” double CD that EMI put out and also on the “Flying Nun 25th Anniversary Box Set” 4-CD compilation that Flying Nun put together for their 500th item in their catalogue.

There is a Wikipedia entry about the band. On it we learn that a 2nd single was recorded but never released after Richard James moved to Auckland from Christchurch (where the band were based) to work as a schoolteacher in late 1983. What songs were going to be on this single? have they been available anywhere else? Would love to hear them! Why weren’t they released?

From it we also learn that Richard James played in The Pterodactyls and The Letter 5. Later on, in 2008 he was in a band called The South Tonight with John Kelcher from Sneaky Feelings. And there was also some lineup changes in 1982, David Swift would leave the drums for Tony Green to take over.

AudioCulture has a couple more details about the band. Here it gets confirmed that the band was active between 1981 and 1983 and played gigs at The Gladstone, Star and Garter, Canterbury University, Punakaiki Festival (April 1983) and the Empire Tavern in Dunedin (1982 & 1983). That Richard James was even in more bands like the Stanley Wrench and The Monkey Brothers and was a guest horn blower in The Vauxhalls. David Swift moved to the UK and became a journalist, writing even for the NME.

There is a video on Youtube for “That’s What Friends are For” that includes many bits of information about the band. I like these sort of videos. Why aren’t there more like it? It tells us that the band recorded the songs at a local studio but weren’t happy with it. A friend of theirs, Roy Montgomery, would play it to Roger Shepherd from Flying Nun who liked it and wanted to put it out on his label. The band wanted to re-record them and that’s when Hood and Knox came in.

Then there is an article written by David Swift for TheBigCity, a website that covers Christchurch culture. Here he mentions that Mike Jeffries was a screen printer, that Ross Humphries from the Pin Group almost became a member but was too busy with other projects, and that the name of the band was his idea. An idea of reading newspapers and circling any two words that taken out of context might work. A report on the press foreign news pages about a bus crash in Spain that killed 35, ‘mainly spaniards’. The mystery of the name is solved.

The band supported The Clean at the Star and Garter in 1982 to a crowd of 500. They supported and played with The Chills, The Pin Group, The Newtones, Sneaky Feelings. The songs on the 7″ were recorded at Paul Kean’s (The Bats) house in Sydenham in March 1982.

I find something interesting dating from July 2018. The label Failsafe Records mentions that they are putting together a “Collected Works and Live” by Mainly Spaniards. We should keep an eye on that, if it happens.

And that’s where I hit a wall. I can’t fin any more information about them. It is not bad of course, I’ve found more information than I expected and hopefully in the near future there will be that retrospective compilation. What about you all? Do you remember them?

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Listen
Mainly Spaniards – That’s What Friends are For