Sparks from the Fire

Yes, I’m alive!  I woke up this morning, heart still pounding, breath still coming.  Lay there thinking.  Wondering at the miracle of life.

I’m alive.  The black pixilated letters appearing before me, one by one, on this screen prove it.  I move one moment to the next, recording thoughts, correcting mistakes, typing on, wondering where it’s all going.  Having no idea why it continues, a little nervous that if I think about it too deeply, I might discover something, a fallacy, perhaps, and then it just could stop.

(more…)

Lately I’ve been feeling an inordinate amount of stress before vocal sessions in the recording studio.  As a music producer, I have spent years in the NY studios producing thousands of sessions and producing vocal sessions is one of my fortes, so why this would now happen after all these years of experience was a mystery to me. (more…)

Part 1 – As a company:

Life is good.  One of my New Years resolutions was to rebalance my life and get back more to my creativity in the recording studio as a composer/producer.  Funny how things just happen when you simply put it out there.

I was feeling like I was getting stuck in the daily excitement of Watchfire Music as an executive with the company and along came more studio projects than I can handle.  All good.  These problems I can live with.  It’s what I live for.

When it rains; it pours.

(more…)

I’m in Los Angeles on Watchfire Music business, a wall-to-wall meeting blitz with my partner, Jim Birch and LA staff planning out the coming year.  While on the plane coming out I once again considered the possibility of death – something that I don’t do with much regularity, but have certainly done a lot more of lately.

No, I’m not about to die, I’m healthy and productive, but the CD project I’m producing and writing now has got me pretty focused on the inevitabilities of life on Planet Earth.  When I got on the plane, I had to chuckle at myself as I considered the danger of what I was about to do for a moment.  I was about to fly through the air – for 3000 miles and then come down at just the right place – smoothly.

The CD project is called Goin’ Home, A Gospel Cantata — Reflections on Crossing Over and Beyond.  It’s a joyous look at death and heaven through the eyes of a number of classic Gospel traditional songs and an equal number of originals.

As I sat on the plane as it taxied down the runway, I went through my usual protective prayers knowing with complete positivity that God was over, under around and throughout that airplane, my mind turned once again to my beloved project as I faced the same danger that millions of people face every day now.  The question, “Could this be it?” came to mind for one fleeting instant and then was drowned out in a rash of denials and better focused positive thought.

(more…)

The Missus and I love the movies. In less busy times we would go twice a week.  Now we rely more on Netflix to serve our passion.  It’s a hobby for me – one of two – the movies and the Yankees.

I love a good adventure and will sit through most chick flicks and even get a little teary-eyed along with the Missus. We’ve also gotten into the documentaries of late because when it comes to the normal everyday movies, well, they just don’t make ‘em like they used to.

I don’t know whether it’s me or the industry, but it just seems that there’s really less and less that I want to drag my weary bones to. So Netflix really has been a kind of savior for us. If I can’t find anything new that’s of interest, then I can always go and visit an old chestnut.

Occasionally I take a chance and stumble across something terrific. In the case of The Adventure of English, I did just that. To fortify my new tangential direction as writer/blogger, I decided that this was a title that might even teach me something.

Usually with the documentaries, when they come in multi- parts, I like to break them up a bit and pepper them with a good war story or even a chick flick, but in this case I forgot to check and ended up getting all 8 episodes in a row. I groaned at the thought of going back to English class 8 nights in a row.

(more…)

Perhaps you’ve heard or read this story as it was passed around.  It’s worth repeating.

They walked in tandem, each of the ninety-two students filing into the already crowded auditorium.  With their rich maroon gowns flowing and the traditional caps, they looked almost as grown up as they felt.

Dads swallowed hard behind broad smiles, and Moms freely brushed away tears.

This class would NOT pray during the commencements — not by choice, but because of a recent court ruling prohibiting it.

(more…)

I like to think of a blog as a modern day soapbox. For some of you, the term “soapbox” may be so archaic as to be unheard of.

Wikipedia to the rescue:

“The term originates from when speakers would stand on a wooden box meant for holding soap. The term is also used metaphorically to describe a person engaging in often flamboyant impromptu or unofficial public speaking, as in the phrases “He’s on his soapbox”, or “Get off your soapbox.”

(more…)

In the old record business model it used to be that the life span of an artist’s new CD was about 3 months.  After 3 months, if a song or CD did not “break out”, the record company would usually give up on the CD and stop the promotion. Then the CD would die. Often, because of the high costs of storage, the excess CDs would simply be destroyed.

It usually takes 6 months to a year to create a CD. Why then so short a life span?

Because the money it took to promote it nationally, even locally, through radio was so exorbitant. In those short 3 months a company could literally spend millions of dollars basically promoting one single off the CD. If it tanked, bye bye to all the work. And most of them did just that – they tanked. For a great variety of reasons – many of which had nothing to do with the worth of the music.

Today, it’s an entirely different story. Radio is fast slipping away as the communication medium for music.  The internet is the new radio. No longer do artists have to manufacture tens of thousands of CDs in preparation for launch. Digital downloads took care of that. The high cost of storing all those jewel cased CDs does not exist anymore. Promotion on the internet relies more on smart creativity than the almighty buck.

So now good and even great music does not have to die and disappear. It can simply sit there in virtual space and wait to be discovered. And so in a very intriguing way, music always remains new – new to the listener who discovers it.

This is one of the high concepts behind Watchfire Music. It’s a trusted destination for people of all faiths and cultures to explore, experience and ultimately purchase new Inspirational music – no matter how old it is. It is always new. Fifty years from now it can still be sitting there on our site at virtually no cost to us waiting to be discovered.

A good reason to explore the site. It’s all new.

~ Peter Link