Business and family commitments usually prevented Joe Puerta from watching the NBC show "E.R."

Until last night, that is.

Puerta, a Milwaukee musician and studio owner and a former member of the bands Ambrosia and Bruce Hornsby and the Range, had a vested interest in "City of Mercy," the "E.R." holiday episode that ran last night.

Puerta's song "I'm Comin' Home For Christmas," written by his friend Bill Pfordresher and recorded at Puerta's The Exchange Recording Complex at 3710 W. National Ave., played in the background for roughly a minute during a scene that took place in a bar near the end of the one-hour show.

Puerta sings lead vocal and plays bass on the song, which features Pfordresher, a former record label vice president, on guitar and Milwaukeean John Calarco on drums and backing vocals.

"This is exciting," Puerta said during a break in a recording session. "In general, the response to the song has been good. As a micro-label, this is just my old friend, Bill, and myself. They told us that they were going to use about a minute of the song, and that's fairly significant.

"I don't know what it would cost to buy a one-minute commercial on that show, but it's got to be an immense amount of money. The only problem is that we didn't have the money to buy an ad saying "If you liked that song, here is where you can buy it."

Puerta, who grew up in Los Angeles and moved to Milwaukee more than a decade ago, said that Pfordresher had written the song and "was trying to do something with it," when Puerta offered to cut the track at his studio.

"Bill was visiting his mom in Chicago and I just said, come on in and let's record it." That was on Sept. 15. In order to make the track available for radio play on Clear Channel, which owns over 1,200 stations nationwide, the recording had to be mixed, mastered and finished by Oct. 1.

"We got it done Sept. 30 and got it to them," Puerta said. "The response has been great. We've been getting added by radio stations all over the country. Now, we're trying to develop any idea we can to make people aware of the song."

The song iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody and Wal-Mart online stores. A video, which carries the theme of a solider coming home, was put together in four days by a friend of Pfordresher, is getting significant hits on YouTube -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_WXXTDg_hk.

"The message is timely, obviously with the troop situation in Iraq," Puerta said. "But, we weren't trying to be political at all. No matter what you think of the war, this is a tough time to be away from home."

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