Welcome to my blog!

I should have done this before as it would have been a way of recording my thoughts and experiences as we wrote, recorded, pressed and attempt to distribute the cd, '10 Cents Above A Beggar - Mark Gresty's Pappadom Songs'. It's my first and therefore a steep learning curve has attended every step.It would have been a good way of distilling the experience and sharing the joys and pitfalls of trying to get my own music to the masses with other aspiring musicians. 


This is just a quickie for a first effort. I promise to get down and dirty with all the detail later. Suffice to say that I was hopelessly naive and simple-minded in my expectations that it would be effortless and easy sailing. It has not. The easy part is writing the songs - though that too is complicated by the fact that I am usually too tired from holding down a job at the same time I try to get my alternative career launched. The business part of this - and we haven't even got to the real music business yet! - is what causes stress and is so time consuming. 


It's Friday - a significant day here for us in that the phone rates are cheap and people we need to contact are still at work as our weekend is different from theirs. Even with cheap rates, calling Canada and the USA to speak to AlertPay and PayPal boost the phone bills frighteningly. Then there are the calls to Sri Lanka to speak to my website designer and the video director and the cd pressing plant and the cover designer. On the plus side, it has been cheaper doing it this way. It's just that, in my naivete, I kind of thought that it would all be over once we got the cd produced. Not a bit of it. That's where it starts really. We are a two man operation and I couldn't have managed without Chamath. He is up all night working on the laptop to link us to various sites and people, upload the songs, video etc and generally publicise the thing. I just disburse the money and make executive decisions! It's a job for many people and suddenly we understand why the big artists and bands have an organisation behind them. It's because it's bloody tiring and a lot of hard work without many hands to share the load.


Anyway, I will attempt to recap all this and diarise the process from top to bottom to share the rollercoaster with anyone else who might like to learn from this or share the experience. 


Over and out.