Guardian readers may know the name Pete Molinari from an occasional column written by Will Hodgkinson. In it, the music journalist, starting out with a budget of £5000, attempted to launch his own record label, Big Bertha, with the aim of turning a profit within a year. Molinari, a home-counties troubadour with a keening Hank Williams vocal style, was his first signing.
As big breaks go, it was a double-edged one. On the one hand, Molinari benefited from acres of free press in a national newspaper. On the other, there was a danger of being dismissed as a gimmick, the pawn in an arch journalistic game (Hodgkinson wasn’t risking his own money; the start-up costs came from The Guardian).
The experiment wasn’t a success: Molinari’s first single for the label, A Virtual Landslide, made just $27 on iTunes, and Hodgkinson ended up muttering bitterly in print about his unworldly charge needing assistance to “tie his own shoelaces.”
Let’s hope the experience doesn’t make Molinari lose heart, because he’s a unique talent: a slight chap from sleepy Chatham, Kent who channels the dustbowl spirit of Woody Guthrie, thanks to an extraordinary voice that seems to float free of time and gender (when the album first went on the Q stereo most of the office assumed Molinari was a)American, b)old and c)female).
Listen to There She Still Remains on Myspace and you’ll understand why. A wonderfully doleful, cry-in-your-beer lament, it sounds like it could have been recorded for the Grand Ole Opry in about 1952.
12:00 PM | 16/01/2008
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