Pocket Rocket has recorded four new songs. So what now?

Back in the old days (oh, here we go... - Ed), you came home from the recording studio with a cassette tape of your song mixes. One cassette each, if you were lucky. You called it a demo. You'd put it on immediately you got in - and more often than not, it didn't sound half as good as you remember it doing in the studio, through their speakers. It sounded muffled; you didn't get the separation of the individual instruments that you heard through the mixing desk in the studio; and then there was the tape hiss. It was disappointing.

And years later, it still sounds shit - I know 'cos I've just played a bunch of my old demo cassettes. And years later, you realise why you never made it.

However unhappy you were with your master cassette though, it would have to do. This was basically because you couldn't afford to remix it or master it properly. Because CDs hadn't been invented. And because you were all still on the dole.

So you'd lovingly create an inlay card, from photocopies made down the library. You'd write and type up a biog - not that you really had a particularly remarkable history, except perhaps that gig at the Rock Garden, where you'd played on the same bill as Suede, before they were famous and when Justine Frischmann was still with them (he's not kidding, either! - Ed) - and then you'd get your mate at work to photocopy it onto letterheaded paper that you have physically cut and pasted together.

You'd then research as many record companies as possible, and regardless of whether they were suitable, you'd mail them a cassette and biog, and hope for the best.

A few days later envelopes would start coming through your door. Some of these envelopes would be clearly carrying returned demos - this was a bad sign, of course - and others would be without, which always seemed like a good sign until you realised it was just a tight, or lazy, record company who couldn't be bothered to return your cassette. Most of the letters within, read something like this: "Thank you for sending your demo to 'So and So' Records, unfortunately, it's not quite what we're looking for at the moment. We wish you every success blah, blah, blah..."

These letters would then be collected like trophies to highlight the stupidity of the music business you were aiming to convince of your talent. These idiots were 'the infidels'. These people were blind. They hadn't got a clue that they'd just 'passed on' the next best thing.

These days, your recording doesn't have to be called 'a demo'. You can proudly call it a 'CD'. On Monday night each member of Pocket Rocket came home from the studio with a four track 'CD'. In fact we're calling it an EP or extended player, to give it its full name.

And we won't be mailing copies of this CD out blindly to record companies. It took fifteen years, but we've learnt that lesson. We will be making hard copies, but that isn't a priority because its quicker to reach your audience these days with downloads. These days people listen to music on their computers, iPhones, or iPods. Their CD collections have stagnated, and their colourful spines are fading gradually away on the shelves in corner of their living room, like old paperbacks.

The first thing that we need to do is update our web presence. This is much more complicated than it sounds but even more tedious than you can imagine. Pocket Rocket has seven sites or pages.

So that is what I have been doing. For the last three or four days, on and off. And I'm still doing it. The process is complicated by the linking all these pages. These days, post-Facebook, you have to consider 'status' activity, as a way of promoting your releases and gigs. Some of these seven sites carry status bars, some are linked to Facebook and Twitter, others aren't. But basically, the objective is to minimise the amount of status bars that you have to update. And maximise the spread of the single piece of news.

I also need to update biogs, create some new banners and some artwork for the downloadable EP, too.

All this is all in preparation for an email-out, announcing the release of the new downloadable EP, with links to where you can buy it, or simply stream it.

To be continued....