M.P.D. Ltd EP NZL Salem XE3012, 1965

Previously we looked at the Cherokees 7" on the Salem label from New Zealand. M.P.D. Ltd also had two 7"s and this rare EP released on Salem.

The EP was originally issued in Australia as Go!! GEP1004 and contains the tracks Little Boy Sad / You Might As Well Forget Him // Lonely Boy / Lonesome Traveller. The Go!! version has a full colour version of this cover pic but I kind of like this black and blue design.

Lonesome Traveller only ever appeared at the time on these EPs, but, that's not really a reason to track it down, it's not much of a song. You Might As Well Forget Him did turn up on the flipside of their last single from 1967, Paper Doll.

Little Boy Sad and Lonely Boy were of course the band's first two singles and were huge hits. These were the two 7"s also released on Salem in NZ.

Ian Crawford - So Much In Love With You 7" USA Interphon IN-7718, 1965

The question for today is - Is this even Australian?

Let's look at both sides of the argument:

Pro: There was an Ian Crawford recording in Australia. He released four singles on HMV and Leedon in 1960-61, and one on Astor in 1969 (which Dean Mittelhauser described as "Rare!!" in a late 80s auction list). He might have even been the Ian Crawford from Crawford Productions (Homicide et al).

Con: These tracks were never released in Australia, unlike...

Pro: ...the other Australian and Kiwi records on Interphon: April Byron, John Chester & The Chessmen, Dinah Lee and ahem, Peter Posa. Interphon, you see, was a label for non-US artists, with a rich antipodean connection.

Con: The flipside - She Goes With Someone New, about a girl spreading it all around town, is written by John Walsh and Murray Wecht, songwriters who worked across the road from the Brill building, and So Much In Love With You has a production credit to John Walsh. So is it a New York production? Mind you, all sorts of songwriting and other credit scams occurred at the time (remind me to tell you about the Notables 7" sometime).

I think I know the answer, but I'll let you ponder it for a while - check back next week. Oh the song? It's beaty pop; an early Nanker-Phelge effort; nothing too special - I can see why they gave it away, first to the Mighty Avengers, from whence this version was presumably prompted.