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Alice Ploughshare

Posted in Music, tagged , , , , , , , on April 12, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Another weird offering from ER Salo Deguierre. My first country song. Sort of.

It was inspired by some of the more interesting weirdness I was subjected to as a young person growing up in a certain southern-western-Midwestern state.

I have to apologize to those who are having trouble hearing my music. I get few responses on it, so I just assumed nobody was listening to my self-indulgent noodlings. But then somebody told me recently that part of the problem is my files are hard to open with this horrendous WordPress version of Quicktime. If that’s the case, I’m very sorry, dear Beauty is Imperfection reader, and I will try to figure out an alternative in the future. I’m a bit tech challenged, though, something I’ve discussed on a few posts here, and so far my efforts to embed something cooler like SoundCloud have been all for nought.

As usual, all sounds and music made by yours truly.

“Alice Ploughshare”
By ER Salo Deguierre

When I walked in the head I found you tweaking
Shivering with a mirror and a straw
I wrapped you up and covered you in blankets
Bloody as the day that you were born

When Interstate 41 turns to Interstate 32
That’s where every trucker’s dream becomes a nightmare
But I still love you
Alice Ploughshare
You were out there stealing my anhydrous
I could not shake you
With your vacant stare
Just the kind of love I always I needed

Did you see those contents under pressure?
When you mixed them up inside that tub?
Did the police hear the lab explosion?
When they were rousting you outside the club?

With your pupils dilated
You’re still stocking Sudafeds
Making cocktails with the cowboys in the drive-thru

But I won’t share you
Alice Ploughshare
Eighteen months of hard-time prison labor
Can I come see you?
You smell like burning hair
Only 30 minutes with no touching
They won’t possess you
Alice Ploughshare
Together we can draw blood from a stone.

Was this love a match we made in heaven?
Or simply one we made down in Ardmore?
Your teeth rotting out and mine just browning
Another year I can’t give up the Skoal.

Though your eyes were black and dead
Your teeth falling out your head
We had more happiness than any two folks had a right to

But chains don’t bind you
Alice Ploughshare
I saw you run away when you malinger
But then I chased you
Through carnivals and fairs
Heaven just a pipe between your fingers

And I won’t share you
Alice Ploughshare
Tweaking all the way to Texarkana
And I still love you
Alice Ploughshare
It never ever seemed you could stop talking

Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Inspired by Pop Star Pink, Led Zeppelin Re-Releases “Stairway to Fucking Heaven”

Posted in Music, tagged , , , , , , on April 10, 2011| 1 Comment »

After watching pop star Pink release her song “Fucking Perfect,” rock legend Jimmy Page announced that Led Zeppelin will release the uncut original version of “Stairway to Heaven,” now known as “Stairway to Fucking Heaven.”

Pink’s song has been released in two versions, the “clean” version of “Perfect” and then the “Fucking Perfect” version that has gained much traction on YouTube and other video sites.

“There’s a lady who’s sure, all that glitters is gold, and she’s fucking buying the stairway to fucking heaven,” sings Robert Plant in his inimitable overblown tenor.

“When I heard Pink sing ‘Fuckin’ Perfect,’ I knew that we had reached a new level of emotional honesty,” said Page. “Pink knows that to be perfect alone is not enough. She had to ratchet up the emotional intensity and make the song even more fucking perfect, if you will. I knew when I heard her blistering truth that the original vision of ‘Stairway’ had to be released immediately.”

Pink, 75% of whose songs deal with self-esteem issues, said she wanted to release the “fucking” version of her “Fucking Perfect” song because it was important to address the in stark terms the utter helplessness that so many of her fans feel, a deep internal wrenching pain she believes is illuminated better by the timeless two-syllable expletive which means “to have sex” and has etymological origins in Germany.

“If there’s a bustle in your fucking hedge row, don’t be alarmed now,” sings Plant. “It’s just a fucking spring clean for the fucking May Queen.”

Literary critic Harold Bloom now records 24 uses of “fuck” in “Stairway to Heaven,” and wondered if it were necessary.

“You forget that the word ‘fuck,’ liberating as it might be, should water down the sentiment a bit. Unnecessary adjectives tend to sap the strength of your prose. I would admonish Pink and Page and Plant that sometimes less is more.”

Page and Plant disregarded Bloom’s criticism.

“Yes there are two paths you can fucking go by, but in the long run. There’s still fucking time to change the road you’re on,” sang Plant, baring his Dionysian hippie stance, unencumbered by petty bourgeois morality that would keep him from singing “fuck, fuck, fuck” as much as he pleased.

According to the Billboard Hot 100 chart, Pink’s song has made her millions of fucking dollars. She says that it appeals to those wounded members of her audience who feel that nobody is fucking listening to them and treating them like fucking children when they’re just trying to do the best they fucking can.

“I wanted to tell the girls of America who are feeling self-hatred, maybe even feeling suicidal, that this is about them. They are not just perfect, they are fucking perfect. And by that I mean, don’t doubt I’m serious just because I’m saying it over and over and over.”

The trend has influenced not only music, but publishing; a slew of book titles are expected to hit the shelves next year, including, “Chicken Soup for the Fucking Soul,” “I’m Fucking OK, You’re Fucking OK,” and “Our Bodies Our Fucking Selves.”

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Sum’thin’ Nice

Posted in Music, tagged on March 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Here’s a bit that I’ve been workin’ on for a while: “Five Wounds,” a guitar piece I wrote in the style of my hero John Fahey. It’s somewhere between folk-blues and muzak, but maybe you’ll like it. As always, I recommend you go listen to John Fahey for the real thing, but maybe this is good music for reflecting, digesting or doing your taxes.

The guitar is in standard tuning. If you can tell me what key I’m playing in, then you’re smarter than I am.

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“The Merc of Cameroon”

Posted in Music, tagged , , on February 5, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Cameroon

Dear Beauty is Imperfection reader, I have hit a milestone of sorts in music making. I was once a math guy, believe it or not, and I still have an obsessive thing about round numbers. It means nothing to you or to mathematician Kurt Godel or to the number 30 itself, but I now have 30 songs up on my home page. These are all original compositions.

The last two I posted are “The Passion of the Elvis” and “The Merc of Cameroon.” These round out a 12-song album I’ve completed, which will even have a cover and everything when I’ve finished mastering. The album will comprise, in order, the first 12 songs on my home page. More important is that I’ve finally got these two songs out of my system after carrying them in my head for more than a decade and a half. That’s right, I wrote these songs when I still lived in Austin, Texas. I used to drum out the parts on a steering wheel of a car I haven’t owned since 1996. I didn’t dare try recording them, however. They had a lot of parts. I wasn’t sure how to make the sounds I heard in my head (at least not until recently). And the lyrics were never right. They’ve changed hundreds of times (OK, maybe dozens). The Elvis song was about a completely different subject and I had to change it when something weirdly Elvisy emerged in the recording process.

“The Merc” is a song about geopolitical turmoil, greed and revenge. Musically, it finds me trying to wed both my love of John Fahey harmonics, the drums of my marching band days, long Sonic Youth suites and, most foreign to me, a bluesier guitar solo than I’ve ever, ever dared try. The results are … well, I’ll let you decide.

“The Merc of Cameroon”
By Salon de la Guerre

Down in the hole where it’s always dark at noon
Stuck in a cell with the merc of Cameroon
He’s advertised his services
In Angola and Equatorial Guinea
And now he’s digging tunnels with a spoon

We escaped in a daring daylight raid
And by the time we thought we had it made
He was cut down to ribbons
By a Cuban guard with a hundred medals
And I never ever thought I’d get away

So I went off and I looked for his wife
And she had his blood diamonds and his knife
She and I fell into embrace
And we took his car and we took his money
But the Merc of Cameroon he was alive

He and his thugs were trying to start a coup
Just one thing that your blood money can do
So now I’m stuck in a Holiday Inn on the Ivory Coast
With my dignitary
When I heard the merc come slide across my hotel room
A-haw hoo hoo

Time for engineering time for contemplating lies
About how those blood diamonds blind my eyes
They’ve been here for a million years
And they’ll be here when I’m dead and buried
But the Merc of Cameroon has me tonight
A-haw hoo hoo!

And he’s got me down
And I hit the ground
And he made one sound
A shot in the chest
Penetrate the evening

Sometimes politicians have to fall
While puny men like me hide in the wall
They’ve been here for a thousand years
And they’ll be here when I’m dead and buried
They leave and track your blood out in the hall
A-haw hoo hoo

copyright 2011, Eric R. Rasmussen

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“First Comes Daddy”

Posted in Life, Music, tagged , on January 22, 2011| 2 Comments »

I’m feeling all sorts of hope this week, not to mention paranoia, sadness, devotion and maybe just a dash of hypochondria, too. These are the kinds of things you too might expect if you, like me, are expecting a child and just said goodbye to the nervous first trimester.

My wife and I have known for a couple of months, obviously, about our baby, but had to keep it to ourselves for obvious reasons. But as I was keeping the news away from family and friends, I also realized that I was still, until very recently, keeping the news from myself in a way, too. As the baby grows from abstract concept to person, I’m going to fall in love with it, and I feel like I’m starting to already. Like your first romantic love, it makes you feel powerful but also fragile. I forgot how hard it is to open your heart up to that kind of love when there are still dangers and risks. I lost my mother and stepfather last year when they died in a car wreck, which has made this a very bittersweet occasion. I’m not only terribly sad that my mother is not going to be here to meet my son or daughter, but worry and grieve over the idea that my own relationship with my baby could ever be cut short. I could get ill or my heart could give out as my father’s did several years ago. I’m healthier than he was, but it’s my paranoia working. It doesn’t have a medical degree.

So keeping in mind my fear and my hope, I finished a new song which, if I can’t quite yet dedicate it to the baby who is here, I can at least dedicate it to the generic love for all babies … or maybe even to falling in love with anything. I hope maybe to sing it to my child someday.

“First Comes Daddy”*

By Eric Rasmussen

First there’s daddy
Stand behind his Mustang
Who can know what strategy he’s making?

Two there’s mommy
Standing on the playground
Laughing at the rules the girls are breaking

What kind of game do you think we two can play?

Third there’s baby
Peeking through the blanket
With all the fussy babies who fight sleeping

After we wake up
And take our nap like thieves
Who’s that No. 3 so quietly creeping?

What kind of game do you think we three can play?

Can you play with pots and pans
Or get lost behind your hands?
Tell me where did mommy go?
Where do you start and where do I?
And why do you cry when I cry?
There’s too much to ever know

Moses basket, drifting through the reeds
I want to stand so close to where you’re standing
World is full of so many big bodies
If I fall will you give me safe landing?

What kind of game do you think we three can play?

Put baby’s feet into the sea; just like my mother did to me
Hold on tight and don’t let go
Bear me up into your arms; keep me safe from every harm
And other things I’ll have to know

Teach me all the things you know until I have the strength to go
It takes so much courage just to love

*I’m sorry to my wife for the patriarchal sounding title.

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Lots O’ Music

Posted in Music, tagged on January 7, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Yes folks, ER Salo Deguierre lives!

I don’t know if anybody has noticed, but I’ve uploaded some 13 new tunes to my home page in the last month (all of which are on the right hand side of this page). Some of these are songs I had previously posted elsewhere, including MySpace. But most of it comes straight out of the archives–a mix of old songs and new. There are things I wrote 18 years ago (like the folk song “Hemingway,” one of my first compositions), things I recorded three years ago but never showed anybody (like “New York Christmas, 1945,”) and a few ditties I rattled off in 2010 (like “Window Train Movie.”) I’ve got a couple of other items in the hopper, but you should probably expect less music from me for a while as I turn my attention to fiction projects that badly need my attention.

If you like any of the stuff here, please comment! I’m very proud of some of these songs, though they may indeed betray the steep learning curve I’ve faced with the recording process. I hope the amateur passion of my kitchen table rock will help you overlook some of my admitted sloppiness.

[2023 update: I forgot that I very briefly called my music act ER Salo Deguierre when I started uploading songs to the internet more than a decade ago. Of course, since then I have released 32 albums under the name Salon de la Guerre. You can find my music link at the top of my home page.]

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Where You Dream Tonight

Posted in Music, tagged , , , , , on December 3, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Sorry for the sparse posting of late. Like many of you, I was enjoying a holiday out of town (going to see an old friend in D.C. for Thanksgiving) and I’ve becoming a bit wary of telling people, perhaps burglars, when I leave the house by blogging about my travels. I have also tried to get a handle on a new writing regime. As much as I love my readers, blogging every day as I used to, even when it’s just stupid, puerile jokes and top 10 lists, has been sapping the strength I should be putting into my fiction. Furthermore, I was also going through something akin to post-coital depression after the election last month. I felt like I had summed up a lot of my feelings on America’s misguided self-mutilation in electing Tea Party members, and I felt I’d succinctly explained my economic point of view. I was a bit spent and didn’t feel the need to hash it all out again.

I’m currently working on a 2011 economic outlook for the magazine I write for.  The news there is pretty dismal–our unemployment problem could continue for years, not because Republicans or Democrats can do anything about it, but because we have years to pay off our debts, both personal and institutional. Americans in saving mode don’t goose GDP forward, and with stagnant growth, unemployment continues. What might help is more government fiscal stimulus. But that’s now become politically impossible because of the national mood and anti-government backlash. In other words, America–your misery is largely your own fault. So make sure and go to the mirror tonight and ask yourself, “Why am I personally hurting the economy? Am I a bad person?” If you feel comforted watching non-financial expert Ralph Reed on CNN telling you what’s really happening, then that’s a perfect place to start looking for your problem.

But I didn’t come here to bitch. I came here to share more music (perhaps you’d prefer it if I bitched). I was digging through some old music files last night and came up with something I recorded in 2007 that I never shared–a guitar piece inspired by John Fahey with lyrics inspired by Huck Finn (which I re-read that year). I had planned on flushing this song down the toilet, but was surprised at how much I still liked it, long and dour as it is. It finds me still trying to negotiate a strange path of Americana, threading a route from folk artists like Fahey to noise artists like LaMonte Young and Sonic Youth. The result seemed to be perfect for a melancholy lyric I’d written about death and the frontier.

So for better or worse, I’m sharing it with you now. It’s called “Where You Dream Tonight.” As always, all the work belongs to yours truly, as if somebody else would claim it.

Where You Dream Tonight
copyright 2007, Eric R. Rasmussen

Where you dream tonight

Is where your heart belongs

Steamer through the mist

Ferry hits the logs

Cannon raise the dead

Stuck two fathoms down

Halo round her head

Waterlogged and drowned

Everything you know

Everything you see

Paddle boats and hacks

None of this is real

Looking through the trees

Tarred and feathered thieves

Is that you and me

Longing to be free?

Carnival in town

Fireworks display

Midgets monkey men

Wonders of the day

Bring your children round

To the river town

Halo round their heads

Thank God that you’re not dead

Image: prozac1 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Decathect

Posted in Music, tagged on September 8, 2010| Leave a Comment »

According to Webster’s dictionary, “cathect” means to invest something with emotional energy. Contrariwise, “decathect” means to take away your emotional attachment to something, perhaps anticipating that you’ll lose it. You can decathect from anything. Countries. The linguistic theories of Noam Chomsky. Your dinner. Your friends. Your president.

Why do you care? You’re probably busy at work, after all and don’t have time. Well, I mention it for two reasons. One is that you probably decathect from things all the time. Remember your friend who didn’t invite you to her wedding? I bet you decathected from her and decided not to invite her to yours. To use a much more pressing global political example, many groups, for example, the Serbians in the 1990s, have found they must decathect from the idea of a greater nationalism when they cannot realistically unite with their fellow ethnic groups in other countries. Decathecting is a silent friend and a silent killer. We do it every day, almost as much as we rationalize. A lot of us Democrats are going to be decathecting from Congress if we lose it in November. Also, if I go downstairs for a bagel later and find out that they ran out hours ago, I’m going to have to decathect from that wonderful butter-, rosemary-, poppy seed-, onion- and garlic-encrusted bread right then and there.

The other reason I’m talking about it is that I wrote a song called “Decathect.” Why? Because it’s kind of different. There’s no singing in this song. And I’m not playing the guitar so much as attacking it, not playing in chords so much as playing around them. I’d call it an atonal song, but I’m sure Arnold Schoenberg, the atonal master, would berate me for playing a few chords here and there. But the idea was to “decathect” from the chords, from the guitar and from song structure.

So if you don’t like it, now you know why. Click here to play: Decathect

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Bieber Fever Turns Deadly, Says CDC

Posted in Math & Science, Music, tagged , , , on September 7, 2010| 1 Comment »

Scientists are working rapidly to sequence a genome to confound the insidious disease.

The Centers For Disease Control in Washington issued a health bulletin Wednesday warning that so-called “Bieber Fever,” has turned deadly in the United States, killing scores of young teenagers, and is now reported in record numbers in adolescent and child populations.

The fever has resulted in at least 10 fatalities across the country, mostly among young people but also some adults. Newly infected patients should in the next few weeks expect to suffer from dysentery, widespread skin lesions, leprosy, anemia and markedly enlarged spleens.

“We’re dealing with a rare disease in which the host body becomes infected by metacyclic promastigotes during blood feasting,” says Dr. Richard Kohen director of communicable disease control at the CDC. “In the visceral stage, these parasites migrate to the vital organs and the body just starts to shut down from total Bieber consumption.”

The protozoan parasites of Bieber fever that overtake the host body have become increasingly drug resistant, said Kohen, who said past treatments of antimony-based drugs have so far proved ineffective to the horrific disease, one in which large large open sores, known as “Bieber bowls” criss-cross the face and shoulders offering weeks of agonizing torment to the patient.

The phlebotomine sandflies that carry the disease are normally found on petting zoo animals and other doe-eyed young mammals. There are currently no vaccines for Bieber fever, though scientists hope that by studying the robust Bieber viral DNA they can sequence the parasite’s genome and concoct a robust carbohydrate version of the vaccine that will save victims before they drown in their own bodily fluids, suffer organs exploding in supperating balls of pus or find their faces melting right off their skulls.

Beiber fever has been identified in at least 50 countries with a total population at risk of some 583 million. In other areas, the disease is known by some of its local folk names such as “Beiber leprosy,” “Spotted Beiber,” and “Chupa Mi Culo.” Many of these areas lack available resources of vaccine and treatment, mostly sodium stibogluconate therapy that hampers the parasite’s ability to absorb food from the surrounding host cells. But some strains of the disease, such as the dreaded “Diffuse Cutaneous Bieber Fever,” also known as “The Canadian Death Rattle,” have become resistant to drugs.

“This is a very smart parasite,” says Kohen. “It just kind of creeps up on you with its seemingly innocuous symptoms and warms your body up. Just when you are most susceptible and weak, that’s when it does the most harm and pretty soon it is turning your body against itself.”

Kohen advises teens to be wary of blood-feeding hematophagous animals and phlebotominae, especially those with the familiar Bieber bowl trademarks. Meanwhile, scientists are preparing with the help of a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to find out how exactly Beiber fever has spread, what are its major gateways of transmission, and why people are so, so, so susceptible.

“This is an insidious, fiendish attack on human host cells,” said Kohen. “It doesn’t just make your spleen larger than your liver. It gets into your very heart and makes you shake, shake shake until your body just totally gives out.”

Image: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Leaving Iraq, “Leaving Babylon”

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 4, 2010| Leave a Comment »

To celebrate the end of military operations in Iraq, I suppose it might be apropos to once again offer up the song “Leaving Babylon,” by ER Salo Deguierre, a tale of intrigue set against our troubles in the Persian Gulf. It’s not an anti-America song, as some might surmise on first hearing. It’s more a look at extreme thinkers and how they so easily switch sides. Because, to an extremist, the content of his thoughts is not as important as his extreme feelings. I’m looking at you, Michael Savage, David Horowitz and John Voight.

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