As mentioned in December, we made some successful bids on a big Beatle and Beatle-related auction here in Sydney, Australia.

The other successful bid was on an auction lot made up of quite hard-to-find, original Australian (plus one quite rare New Zealand) Dark Horse Records singles. These are all 45’s you very rarely come across in the wild, so they’re welcome additions to the collection.

They each come in their original generic company outer sleeves too – in this case from Festival Records, which had the manufacturing and distribution rights for A&M Records (Dark Horse Records‘ parent company).

The first, which will be reasonably well-known to most, is from the George Harrison protégés Splinter. Their song ‘Costafine Town’ is lifted from the 1974 Dark Horse debut LP, The Place I Love. Harrison produced all the songs and played a variety of instruments, including electric and acoustic guitars, dobro, bass, and harmonium:

Next up another Splinter single, this time from 1975, called ‘Which Way Will I Get Home’ taken from the band’s second LP, Harder To Live produced by Tom Scott:

And there’s one other Splinter single from the Harder To Live LP, called ‘Half Way There’:

Also in this auction lot was a single from Shankar Family & Friends. It is of course ‘I Am Missing You’, taken from their self-titled 1974 LP, produced and arranged by George Harrison:

Jiva was a Los Angeles band signed to Dark Horse that released only one album with the label in 1975. From that self-titled album came this single. They had a nice funk/soft rock sound, but never made into the charts:

Attitudes was a bit of an L.A. super group consisting of killer keyboardist David Foster, brilliant guitarist Danny Kortchmar, bassist Paul Stallworth, and Jim Keltner on drums. They were all top flight session players who went onto play with just about everybody. In fact a very young David Foster met Jim Keltner while playing on George Harrison’s Extra Texture. Attitudes released two LPs on the Dark Horse label and this first single comes from their self-titled 1975 debut release:

This second single ‘Sweet Summer Music’ was included on Attitudes’ second album, from 1977, called Good News:

In this auction lot there was also an unusual New Zealand pressing of ‘Sweet Summer Music’ on the Dark Horse label but distributed there by WEA (i.e. Warner Bros. – hence the different company sleeve and small print on the labels). The label also contains a mistake as it incorrectly states under the title “from The Dark Horse Album “Attitudes” DH 3021″. It should say “from The Dark Horse Album “Good News” DH 3021″

If you want a bit more information on the Dark Horse label check out this article on the official George Harrison site.