22 History Rich Titanic survivor recalls harrowing moment ship ran out of olives.
21 Bravo “Below Deck”: The audience patiently awaits a mutiny, even if it might take years.
23 PBS “Frontline”: The complicated ethics of exaggerating the size of some ethical questions.
25 ABC Battle of the Network Wonks
45 HBO A tantalizing documentary about an HBO show that may or may not have hired intimacy coordinators. It’s hot-t-t-t-t-t!
72 Bravo “Finding Your Roots” discovers a lot of old farmers.
89 ESPN We’re going to keep mixing sports frivolously. Up next: “Pickleball Meets Monster Energy Supercross.”
170 C-SPAN 2 Here’s where you can find out about all the books you might otherwise be reading if you weren’t watching a TV show about books.
32 Nickelodeon Movie: “Henry Danger Has Lukewarm Date With Dale Prudent.”
82 HGTV How to upgrade the vestibule the cops have locked you in during a university protest sweep.
96 Tubi This episode of “Body Fixers” offers extra blood and pus.
98 C-SPAN South Dakota governor Kristi Noem advocates for “Secretary of Dog Killing” as new cabinet position.
96 Tubi “Body Fixers” discovers what’s really wrong with your hair extensions: You have borderline personality disorder.
72 Bravo “Vanderpump Rules” explores the allure of forbidden love but asks how forbidden it really is when everybody knows that it’s going to result in ratings that are very much bidden.
101 CNN Israel-Palestine: How your extreme thinking on a complicated issue is going to make everything better, according to the people you are taking social cues from at this moment.
86 TBN Good news! Grace just got a lot more affordable!
86 TBN As we watch people dissolve into their own solipsistic and bloodthirsty belief systems, we’re reminded that morality is sometimes best left to the professionals at AutoZone.
I am very proud to announce the release of Salon de la Guerre’s 38th album, a work of electronic music with futuristic themes called How Do You Bleep? As of today, the album is available on all the major streaming services, including Apple Music, Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube and Bandcamp.
As I say on my music page, the album is a work of electronica and dance numbers with lyrics on futurism. The songs are often about robots and their attempts to live like humans in a world where humans are noticeably absent. The album imagines a future of both plenty and scarcity and ponders when feelings (such as love) are both natural and programmed.
Why this? Why now? After all, just four days ago I put out a classical album, and the week before that a slate of folk songs, coming on the heels of a garage rock album a couple of months ago and another classical album a month before that. I’m starting to sheepishly feel as if I’m watering the world with too much music, released in a schizophrenic genres, to the dismay and consternation and possible irritation of my few fans.
The answer is straightforward: A lot of this stuff had simply been backing up.
In 2022, I consciously decided to stop making music for a while. I’d just put out a garage rock album I was quite proud of and thought it might represent the height of my abilities; I thought maybe I should turn my attention back to fiction. Because I can’t help twiddling, however, I decided to put a bunch of electronica bleeps together with my wonderful Logic Pro X software, inspired by Talking Heads songs and some other acts. Rather than rush to finish it, I asked a friend if he’d like to collaborate. He’s a busy guy, so he toyed with one song but otherwise had to go back to his many other more fruitful endeavors.
So there my electronica album of goofball bleeps sat for two years gathering dust. After I finished the first draft of a novel in 2023, I started thinking of music again, especially when my son said he wanted help with a music project. So I pulled out my prized RODE shotgun boom mic, the same one my wife and I used to shoot The Retributioners. Real musicians laugh at me, but I used this mic for a decade to record all Salon de la Guerre vocals. I liked its sound. I also didn’t want to plunge $400 into a dedicated studio mic, one that might not plug into my iPhone. (Again, I jam econo.) But last year my RODE finally died and I had to slosh around some funds so I could purchase better gear. That took some time to iron out.
At the same time, I’d started gathering together some folk songs, since I tend to write songs so often these days I’m often doing it in my sleep. Here, too, I was frustrated because the very old guitar my late mother had given me developed a buzzy fret. It ruined the sound of some of my fragile folk numbers. I was looking at either spending a lot of money to fix a very old instrument or replacing it altogether (I don’t get sentimental about much anymore, but I make an exception for this workhorse dreadnought acoustic guitar. … Did I mention my late mother bought it for me?) I walked the thing down to a basement in the Village, where an old longhair whose workshop was not much bigger than a walk-in closet gazed over my acoustic guitar, threw it into a vise, gave it two or three sharp thwacks with a hammer, and immediately removed the buzz. He said he didn’t need cash but instead offered to take possession of a broken practice bass I’d brought along. It was the most 1960s transaction ever.
By the end of last year, I had all the gear I needed to not only dive back into new material but to finally yank my electronic album out of mothballs and finish the vocals.
Sorry for the long story.
How Do You Bleep? was composed and performed by me in my home studio in 2022 and 2024. I produced all the tracks except for one: “Lead Me To Your Robot Heaven in the Mountains,” which which was co-produced by my brilliant friend Christian Montalbano. Christian thought the Logic Pro sounds in my original version were a bit cheesy and he switched them out for better instruments and offered a more fluid beat, for which I’m eternally grateful. You can check out Christian’s amazing music here.
I also provided the cover art for this one. You can listen to a sample of the new album here:
The new music barrage continues. Earlier this week, Salon de la Guerre (the name I use for my musical act) released its 37th album, called The Tug Fork War. The album is now available for streaming on YouTube, Bandcamp, Amazon, Apple Music, Spotify and Pandora, among other platforms. You can also make Tiktok videos with it (at least until that platform is banned).
In the past, my classical albums have used thematic concepts and they usually outlined the story of a character and his or her adventures (someone whose identity and story lines are revealed only from the song titles). The new album didn’t seem to have any narrative qualities and instead was tapped from a stream of pure abstraction and my love of Sergei Prokofiev’s work. The title is a very veiled reference to a piece of Americana, but there’s no need to read too much into it.
As always, this was an excuse for me to discover new stuff: specifically to find more dynamic ways to voice the notes in my computer software and get them to sound less like … computer software. (The album was created on Logic Pro X and GarageBand, some of it made with a scoring tool and some of it played by me on an iPhone screen keyboard. … Yes, I sometimes make music the way other people play video games.) Maybe the day will come when I can actually score a work for a live string quartet, but I file that dream under “Things I would do if I had a geyser of money shooting up from my sink drains and toilet, horror movie style.” As the Minutemen might have said, over here at Chez Rasmussen, we jam econo.
I’m including the first track of The Tug Fork War here. But, as I promised, there’s more to come. This week I also have an electronica work coming out with futuristic themes. Aren’t you lucky! Until then, watch this space for random smatterings of poetry and the occasional comedy bit.
(The cover photo of the model on The Tug Fork War was taken by VladimirFLoyd.)
Facts are poor and pissing things Lost in a green lawn Where the pool was shocked For eyes to be stung Facts have no meaning unless shrieked Screamed so loud they stress the picture window and its scoop of suburb to point of fracture A scream smoked and peaty and single malt “You kept sleeping you bitch when you heard our daughter had snuck out. Get out of that bed now.” And then a gun made its appearance Oddly shy and quiet the .357 Serving as punctuation, an exclamation point On a husband’s scattered thoughts Words too fussily labored over This fact gone went missing amid the ph-balanced water Gushing the next day from the side of the pool Like innocence aborted Forgotten, all this that happened, In a Sunday scrum over a steaming fowl.
I’m proud to announce (or I regret to inform you, depending on your musical tastes) that I have yet another album out.
Salon de la Guerre’s 36th album, No One Hears a Zen Busker, has arrived on the streaming services. For whatever reason, I’m enjoying an extremely prolific phase in my songwriting and composing career. I’ve released three albums in the last four months and I have two more dropping in the next few weeks.
I know it’s hard to keep track of, and I’m sorry if my curating skills aren’t the equal of my ability to keep churning music out as if by fire hose.
The latest set is (mostly) acoustic folk songs. I like composing on guitar, but I’ve had technical problems (including the death of my most expensive beloved microphone) that kept me from recording acoustic guitar properly for a while, which is why I haven’t released such an album since 2017, when I dropped Keep Your Slut Lamp Burning. Like that collection, this new one is about eccentric characters and folk heroes, both modern and classic. It includes Americana experiments (including a song inspired by Ambrose Bierce) and meditations on despair and joy. The usual Salon de la Guerre territory.
The album is now available on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Amazon, Bandcamp and Pandora, among other places music is streamed. Unfortunately, I still do not offer physical CDs, which would be too expensive and make this little side endeavor of mine a bit too expensive to continue.
Even as I write this blog, I’m already thinking ahead to the release of my next album, which is coming out next Monday. That one is another detour into classical music and finds me continuing in my quest to play in the fields of Prokofiev. I’ll let you know when it arrives on the streaming services.
Until then, please enjoy a sample of No One Hears a Zen Busker. As always, the music was written, performed and produced by me, Eric Randolph Rasmussen, and it was recorded at my home studio in New York City in the early months of 2024. I also took the cover photo.
Something to hold Something to wrangle They put your soul in a jail Your ribs in a mangle
The daylight that struck you through She knew the light in your eye Was reflected pages of other people’s news The cauterizing fish Sealed fate in memories of stew
And a mother dressed as a stove Hove a dish as easy as a sorry slur Then sorry to have spoken or to have moved I am both of them, thrower and thrown Unleashed to anger when in the throat it should be sewn
I am my father’s yell and my mother’s quiet And you could see in the long genetic party of the bridegroom pictures Some 60 eyes of generations looking through Looking through you
And you hove with all of them To make the play twist forward You are the screw
Aren’t you lucky, you darlings! Salon de la Guerre’s 35th album is here, and it’s a lot of fun!
The album is called Citizen Wet Smack and it features some hard-rocking tunes such as “Scooter Impossible,” “Fred Jr.,” and “Once Evil, Now Retired.” The songs cover familiar Salon de la Guerre ground, with vignettes of characters you might find in short fiction: small-time criminals, white collar scammers, spoiled rich kids and unethical philosophers.
As of this week, the album is available on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, Pandora, YouTube and Bandcamp, among other streaming services. You can also use my stuff to make TikTok videos, if you’re so inclined. (My old song “Funny Drunk” is evidently popular for that sort of thing.)
About the title: “Wet smack” is an old-timey phrase for “wet blanket” or misfit. I use it a lot in my novels when I can.
The instrumentation on the new album is weird (Salon de la Guerre fans should expect no less by now). I include a lot of original Fender strat guitar performances alongside prefab guitar sounds generated on my iPhone GarageBand. I confess, this app has a hard rock guitar timbre that I quite like, and which I can manipulate in Logic Pro X. I understand that some purists probably shudder at that thought. But as I’ve said before, I’m not a musical purist about anything. I don’t care where songs come from as long as I’ve got an instrument or machine that gives me easy access to my own melodic ideas. Sometimes for this reason I get some snickers about my production quality from friends and critics. On the bright side, I’ve squeezed out a few hundred songs by doing things my way (I’ve got three more albums dropping soon, and my total song count is now just under 500 titles).
I noticed after I submitted my music to a paid review site a few months ago that a good reviewer can spot my influences pretty easily. The critic who wrote about my last album, Even Toy Dogs Get the Blues, thought he could hear some Peter Gabriel in my voice. I accept that view, though I don’t mind stating my influences outright, especially for my latest work. It’s pretty much all Sonic Youth, Joy Division and the Pixies. So there you go!
I’m also responsible for the cover art this time around, since my preferred collaborator has been busy. The plaster bust photos were purchased from a photo wire and taken by someone named Parsadanov.
I will likely do this kind of album again in the future, but the three albums I’ve got coming up are all very different: one’s folk, one’s electronic, one’s classical.
But for now, please enjoy a sample of the new album below, and buy it if you’d like!
Salon de la Guerre is very proud to announce that its latest modern classical album, Uncle Ernie’s Progress, is now available for streaming or purchase on all the major music websites, including Amazon, Apple Music, Pandora, Spotify, YouTube, TikTok and Bandcamp. This is my sixth attempt at classical music, and, like other albums in this series, it tells a musical story about the member of an extended family.
I have tried to improve on and embellish previous efforts, and this time added computer sax and marimba parts (after spending a little too much time listening to Frank Zappa’s early ’70s work).
The album was made with two software programs: GarageBand and Logic Pro, and I wrote many of the parts with a scoring tool. I try not to fool my listeners about what I’m personally performing and what the computer is doing, so here’s full disclosure: There are three piano pieces here I have scored and let the computer generate (including “Ernie’s Score,” “Ernie Sells His Steinway” and the bookends to “Ernie’s Goodbye”) and the effect is that of a player piano. But the piano parts elsewhere, including those on “Ernie’s Heart Monitor,” “Half a Heart,” “Half a Stomach” and “Betina’s Gone,” for example, I played directly onto an iPhone keyboard using my own intuitive keyboard playing style. For a self-taught piano player, I can sometimes do impressive things, but I’m not a trained concert pianist, and don’t want anyone to walk off with that impression.
I’ve sometimes tried in the past to use classical music theory terms to describe what I’m doing, but I’ve given that up, and confess that I’m not even sure what key I’m playing in. I have struggled with the idea of learning more music theory in the spirit of curiosity and self-improvement and intellectual rigor, but the fact is that any good artist simply creates first and asks questions later. All I’ll add is that I’d read a bit about Frank Zappa using major second intervals in his chords (in other words, making a chord out of two notes sitting right next to each other instead of separated, an approach that can sound eerie). I tried to mix some of that idea into the new album, but probably stopped pursuing that aim whenever I’d hit on my own new melodic ideas. My whole approach to music is to always learn something new when I’m creating anything and then let inspiration take over from there–or otherwise be guided by a new conceptual idea. (For instance, what would happen if I used microtonal experiments, using tones between the degrees of the scale, to make country music the way Gram Parsons would? Or what if I tuned a guitar with open tunings like Thurston Moore and then played it like Maybelle Carter, tapping out the melody on the bass and scratching the higher strings for the chords to make post-punk country music? If you’re interested in that, you can check out my album Air is a Public Good.)
Unfortunately, this approach also means I keep genre hopping. I have three other albums sitting in various degrees of completion. One is folk, one is electronic dance music and one is alternative rock. Whatever it is, I’m hoping at least one thing I make this year turns you on.
As always, the album was completely composed, arranged and produced by Eric R. Rasmussen. Copyright 2023.
Check out a track from Uncle Ernie’s Progress below.
In a few weeks, Salon de la Guerre will release a new album, another electronic symphony. This one is called Uncle Ernie’s Progress, and I’m hoping to release it in January or February. I created the album at my home studio in November and December.
While the project started out with Frank Zappa vibes (it included lots of marimba parts) I soon returned to my favorite classical music instrumental standbys, including GarageBand’s version of an erhu and string arrangements. The album was made on both GarageBand and Logic Pro. Though it’s all instrumental, the album, like my other classical albums, follows the adventures of an extended family. I do this for thematic and dramatic reasons, and also practical ones: The albums with the family titles (with figures in half shadow) are my classical albums. This is the only way I know to keep you from mistaking this stuff for my rock music, aside from changing the name of my act altogether when I’m doing classical works. (Some friends have suggested I get rid of my band name for all projects. Hmph! So I showed them! I even trademarked it! Do not doubt the strength of my wrong-headed convictions, philistines!)
An update! While my original post included a new song from Uncle Ernie’s Progress, I recently came across an article in The New York Times about the ways song pirates were stealing other people’s music and releasing it under their own names. For that reason, I’m going to cut back on offering sneak previews, which would make it easier for thieves to publish my stuff on the major platforms. I’m sorry if you came across a dead link, but I’ve removed all hints of Uncle Ernie’s Progress from Sound Cloud for now.
Eric R. Rasmussen is a novelist, composer, journalist and filmmaker. He is the author of nine novels, including the three-volume work The Ghost and the Hemispheres. He is the sole force behind the musical act Salon De La Guerre. And he is the writer/director of the online Web comedy series “The Retributioners” starring Stephanie Faith Scott.
Beauty is Imperfection 