I knew that getting Big Bertha Records' first single out on time would involve all kinds of administrative hassles, but there were two aspects that seemed like they might be fun: setting up a pre-single launch gig and commissioning the artwork for the sleeve.
How wrong I was.
I felt that the country blues of Pete Molinari would be ideal for Green Note, a small but smart and welcoming venue in Camden, North London, that doubles up as a restaurant. Initial preparations went well: Immy, the Green Note's owner, knows and likes Pete's music and was only too happy to offer him a Thursday night slot on April 5. She suggested that tickets should go out at £7: that would be enough to cover the cost of hiring a sound engineer and, as long as the gig sells out, leave something for Pete and the supporting artist, a great young Welsh singer called Cate Le Bon, to take home.
It's only when the tickets went on sale that the problems started.
For a small venue like Green Note there is a correspondingly small guest list. That means that all those journalists and DJs you are hoping to get down - people so used to freebies, therefore so pathologically tight, that buying a beer at a gig sends them into a cold sweat - won't be on it. But if they have to pay £7, they won't come. So what do you do? You buy them tickets yourself.
The problem is, I am a journalist, and I am one of their pathologically tight number, and as such I resent blowing the minimal record company budget on tickets for a gig I'm organising myself, which I then have to give away to people who will spend the entire evening standing by the bar and talking shop. So I've decided not to bother. If they want to come they'll have to pay, alongside the real fans (and there are a few). This means that the brilliantly talented Pete Molinari and Cate Le Bon might actually get paid for the gig. And it could also prove to be the biggest PR disaster in the history of independent record companies.
As for the cover artwork for Pete's forthcoming single, A Virtual Landslide, I thought that the rough pen-and-ink style of an artist called "Nervous" Stephen Fowler would work perfectly. And he did a great job - his sepia drawing of a tumbledown house in the woods with a silhouetted figure before it reflects the ancient mystery etched into the single's grooves. It was only when the entire thing was done that Fowler announced he didn't have a computer, nor did he know how to operate one of these not-really-that-new machines. Prontaprint can come in handy at the oddest times.
And finally, next time I commission artwork I must remember to show it to the person that has actually made the single. Pete is currently on tour in Australia. If he hates his debut single's sleeve, there's not much he can do about it now - but I suppose it would have been polite to show it to him before it went to the pressing plant.
