We had the chance to visit the lovely city of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia last weekend. A friend directed us to a record store they knew nearby – Licorice Pie – in the suburb of Prahran, not far from the CBD. If you are ever in Melbourne, this place is well worth a visit as they have heaps of well catalogued stock and at very reasonable prices.

Of course we were on the trail of some Beatle treasure, trying to fill in some gaps in the collection, and Licorice Pie did not disappoint.

We’ve been looking for some time for a copy of John Lennon’s Mind Games on the Axis label. Axis was an EMI subsidiary, the Australian equivalent of the UK budget label Music for Pleasure.

Axis released Mind Games three times in all, and each release is slightly different and even has different catalogue numbers. We had two of the three, but not the third – until now:

This one has the catalogue number AXIS.6441 (the others are AX701272 and AX1009, both of which have yellow Axis labels). This one has black and white labels:

The sleeve also contained an original advertising insert with lists of other Axis budget titles on both sides, all for just A$4.99!

Licorice had some other John Lennon records we couldn’t resist. For example, this 7″ single in a picture cover, released in November, 1981 on the Parlophone label. It’s got two ‘A’ sides:

And this Lennon/Ono 7″ picture sleeve, a single taken from the Milk and Honey LP, released in 1984:

This next find is going to sound pedantic. It’s an Australian pressing of The Beatles ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko’. We had it already, but not with the Northern Songs publishing credit printed on the left-hand side of the Apple label:

When we discovered ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko’ it was in a large box full of other Apple 7″ singles – quite a few of which we were after. Probably the most collectable was Paul and Linda McCartney’s ‘Eat At Home’ single from the Ram period (1971):

This one is interesting because not only is it kind of rare (you don’t see many copies of it around), but it has an uncut Apple label on the ‘B’ side (the song ‘Smile Away’, also from Ram):

There was a nice clean pressing of George Harrison’s ‘Give Me Love [Give Me Peace on Earth]’ in the box too:

Then two non-Beatle artists signed to the Apple label. First up, Badfinger with ‘No Matter What’:

And finally, the late great Billy Preston from 1969 and ‘That’s The Way God Planned It’: All these records filled gaps – they were records we didn’t have, despite years of collecting. That’s testament to a great record store. Get along to Licorice Records in Melbourne if you can!

(As usual, click on images to see larger versions)