After the grid shut down, A religious order rose in the darkness The charismatic types They suddenly had found new purpose.
The lord gave animals To those on whom New grace was shown
The winners and losers now Had rearranged themselves somehow
The cries in the dark that night Pretend not to hear it Pretend not to hear it
Follow me and I’ll promise to Show you land God gave to you And the beasts you will be husband to
There was a lottery Someone’s riding point tonight New faces have appeared Like ghosts lost in the night
A world of orphans needs A patriarch no matriarch The tribe it must decide before The eyes go dark What lessons are learned Principles barked
And a leeward green and windward blue The ark’s bacteria carried mostly in you Gut flora hosannas and minuscule cheers Carried the day; they were our seers
A world of orphans needs no dogma now Leviathan the blush blue cow Still chases us in reddish ruts Leaves us yearning with tiny cuts Leaves us burning in sun’s russeted butts And hoping to churn in a new god’s guts.
I am very proud to announce that Salon de la Guerre’s latest album has hit the virtual shelves. It’s called Betrayed, and it’s now available on Apple Music, YouTube, Amazon, Spotify, Bandcamp and Pandora, among other services.
Betrayed is a collection of dark pop songs on political and personal anxiety, obsession, jealousy, guilt and redemption. Yet it’s all pretty poppy and peppy, lest you get the wrong idea from all those scary nouns.
This time out I turned to some singing help from my friend Christina E., who contributes the wonderful lead vocal on my song “Latin Quarter Restaurant,” and whose harmony vocals and vocal counterpoints can be found throughout the rest of the album as well. When I wrote some of these parts, I realized that my voice just wouldn’t do, and I turned to Christina, who offered not just great interpretation but allowed me to visit more spaces in the sonic landscape and give the songs a different color and personality. Also, working with her was a joy. When you work alone so much, it’s a breath of fresh air to have someone else come in and show such enthusiasm for what you’re doing and lend so much positive energy.
I’m fairly proud of my production on these cuts … or at least as proud as I can be with a layperson’s understanding of sound engineering. Of all my strengths, I rank my arranging talents pretty high and my audio tech acumen pretty low.
I composed the music almost entirely on Logic Pro X this time around, though I also tucked in a solo here and there that I performed on an iPhone keyboard. (I haven’t picked up an actual guitar yet this year … but watch out for it. Sometimes I get itchy to play.)
As always, Betrayed is only available online in a digital format (which will be the case every time out until I’ve signed a record deal). The album was written, produced and performed by yours truly at my home studio from May to July 2025. Again, the background vocals on a smattering of songs and the lead vocal on “Latin Quarter Restaurant” are by Christina E. The color photo illustration on the cover is by CSA-Printstock.
Another hero of mine has passed. David Johansen was the last living member of proto-punk band the New York Dolls (his survival to age 75 was a feat in and of itself since so many of his bandmates died far too young of drugs, drowning, cancer, etc. … in a series of almost Biblical blights).
When I was 17, I was looking over one of the first in Rolling Stone magazine’s soon-to-be-too-many “Top 100” lists. Clocking in at No. 55 was a very tiny picture of a band. I had very good eyes back then and a really great knack for recognizing people, and even though the guy in front was the size of an ant and dressed as a woman it was incontrovertibly the cross-dressing ant face of one Buster Poindexter, the SNL lounge singer and “Hot Hot Hot” guy. My life changed after I read that issue because I realized he had a whole history (and a different name) I didn’t know about.
It was then I realized I was going to have to do all my own research to be a better music fanatic. Not only did I discover the Velvet Underground in that magazine but I figured out all the bands who got lost before the punk explosion. The New York Dolls was one of them, one of the most misunderstood bands of the early 1970s and most tragically overlooked and mismanaged and destroyed. They dressed glam but sounded different. They arranged and presented like the Rolling Stones (and also had a singer with big lips) but the harmonics and sonic approach and beats were all completely different. They paid homage to the short pop songs of the 50s and early 60s, but it was 1973 and nobody cared about that yet in rock music. (It would take the Ramones and the Clash to create the context for the approach.) To this day, I think people don’t really pay attention to what the band was doing differently because it’s easier to just say they were all drag-dressing drug users who all died in sad and stupid and suspiciously ignominious ways and seemed to carry the curse of Job.
I never begrudged Johansen reinventing himself as campy lounge singer and often entertaining ham actor (the music business is intrinsically evil and it’s wrong to judge those who have figured out how to survive in it). Whenever I hear “Hot Hot Hot” today I tap my toes a little, sure, but mainly I smile at the fact that somewhere an angel is getting his wings and the guy who wrote “Looking for a Kiss” is getting a mechanical royalty.
“Looking for a Kiss” is one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll songs ever made, by the way, and yet all the other songs on the New York Dolls’ first album are almost as good. It’s a classic from end to end. Do Buster Poindexter a solid and go listen to it.
I’m not an actor, but I’ve worked with them and been married to one and was the child of one, so I’ve absorbed a lot of attitudes about it. I’ve also listened to many Orson Welles interviews about the subject. Welles was quite obsessed with theatricality and the idea that what was unreal could also be true. (He was mostly talking about James Cagney.) When I think about Gene Hackman, I ask a different question, “How can someone so real be so interesting?” By real, I mean he doesn’t seem to be acting at all, and yet he’s obviously doing something extremely subtle and magnificent or he’d be boring to watch. He’s not miming. He’s not pandering. He doesn’t use funny voices. When he plays a bad guy, he reminds you of what Welles said: “He’s just a guy who has his reasons.”
One Hackman moment I loved was in “Bonnie and Clyde,” where he played Buck Barrow. Reunited with his brother after a long separation, he tries to incite a party atmosphere but it goes nowhere and he kind of awkwardly slumps and the awkward moment is documented in a long take. Or I think of the moment in “The Royal Tenenbaums” when Royal tells his ex-wife he’s dying, then admits he isn’t after she starts crying and that it was basically a ploy to get her attention. This would come off as extremely silly in a lot of hands, yet Hackman made it real and touching and you almost forgave him the psycho ploy. Again, he was just a real guy who had his reasons.
The actors in my life tell me that real acting is listening, not miming or hamming or practicing moves in a mirror that you plan to repeat later. I think that has something to do with Hackman’s appeal. Real behavior, if you trust it and have insight into it, is always fun to watch. We’re built to put ourselves into the narratives we’re receiving (it’s part of the way we animals survive) and when you have someone who is so good at being so true to the behavior of the character, you must have magic.
I’m very sad to hear of the way Hackman died and sorry for his wife as well, and will like everyone else sit patiently for unhappy details. But I’m not too worried that the horrible nature of his death will overshadow his body of work–because his work was just that powerful.
You can read his obituary at the New York Times here:
Congratulations to me! Salon de la Guerre’s 41st album drops this week.
The album is called Resting Horse Face, and it’s now available for purchase or streaming on all the major music services, including Apple Music, Amazon, Pandora, Spotify, YouTube and Bandcamp. As always, I’m selling this album exclusively in a digital format.
Like most (decent) people, I’ve been unhappy with the political situation in the United States in the last few months and the confluence of hatred, ignorance, greed, superstition and stupidity that has taken hold in the halls of American power. I’ve tried to compartmentalize my despair and turn my feelings into art as much as possible. Given that I’m pretty prolific anyway, it’s likely a lot of my music is going to hit the airwaves in the next few months. The good news is that I never seem to run out of ideas.
The other reason I churned out new music is that I hit a few snags releasing my latest novel, and I needed to stop and take a breather by doing something else.
I describe the new album this way on my music site: “It’s an eclectic collection of electronic and guitar-driven pop songs on futurism, compulsive behavior, nostalgia, frustrated romance and frustrated cult leaders. The lyrics feature a rogue’s gallery of half-talented manipulators and smoothies.”
My last couple of albums were focused on my piano and punk guitar playing. Most of Resting Horse Face, by contrast, was composed on my Logic Pro X software, and this project was more about showing off my composing and arranging talents. First I make the music, then I usually try to find lyrics and a singing style that fit the cinematic quality of the music. I never know if the music I’ve created is going to be right for the sweet spot in my voice, so it’s always a bit of a surprise to me when I start singing; only then do I know if this set of songs is going to rock or suck.
This time out, somehow my voice really worked with the material without sounding too reedy or deadpan. That’s either a testament to how much my singing has improved … or sheer luck. Don’t hold your breath for next time, though.
As always, the album, was written, recorded and produced by yours truly at my home studio over the December 2024 and January 2025. I hope you like the results.
I know I promised you a novel, and by gum, I still plan to give it to you. But I hit a few snags. I was hoping to have a friend or two look my new book over for plot holes and inconsistencies, but people have busy lives and often don’t have time to read my books for fun.
That’s why I offered a couple of them cold hard cash. No takers.
So while I’ve been giving my weary eyes a rest before the next book edit, I did what comes natural to me when I’m sitting around with resting writer face: I recorded a new album of music. As I’ve said before, I can almost write music in my sleep these days, and it’s a talent I try not to take for granted since it was given to me by, um … OK, insert whatever your parent-instilled version of a creator is here.
The result is my new album, called Resting Horse Face, which should hit the streaming services this week. (I still don’t sell physical media versions of my music, unfortunately, since it’s prohibitively expensive.) The new album is a set of pop and rock pieces, mostly punchy and upbeat, though a couple of songs are experimental and moody. There are a few guitar solos, but overall there’s less guitar this time out, since I wanted to try other colors. I’ll add more details when the album has dropped, which I hope happens in a day or two.
In the next couple of months, I hope to put out my 10th novel. I guess you could also call this my eighth novel, except that I broke up one of my fatter books a few years ago into three pieces, hoping readers might be more amenable to it if it came in pieces.
The new book is called The Silly Dreams of Shallow Sleep, and it’s a follow-up to my novel Zip Monkey, which I released some years ago. The series follows the adventures of Angel Bimini, a former pornographic actress who has become a New Jersey private detective.
In the new book, she is asked to follow the business dealings of a dead cancer researcher. His ex-colleague thinks his death might have something to do with the Chinese government and its attempts to infiltrate the U.S. scientific research community. Angel is also dealing with a dependency on prescription painkillers, something she started taking after sustaining injuries in the previous book.
I haven’t written a novel in a few years. I’ve been too busy doing music, which is a lot easier for me to write, produce, and release (as you can tell from my prolific output as Salon de La Guerre). But I started tapping out a new work on Angel Bimini a couple of years ago when I remembered her story really wasn’t finished. I’ve even got sketchy ideas for a third book in the series.
I don’t write long form fiction with the same quick facility that I write music. While it’s easy for me to write dialogue and characters, it’s harder for me to keep a long plot sustained, especially a mystery story. The main thing I usually wanna do with my writing is make people laugh, but keeping the audience interested over the course of a book takes a little bit more effort.
I’m having some friends look over the latest draft before I release it. When I do, it should be available as an ebook on Barnes & Noble and Amazon. I know I promised to have paperback-on-demand versions of my books at some point, but these take a little bit more money investment and are a bit more of a design challenge, so I ask for a little more patience on that front.
Watch here for more news. And if you’re interested in any of my other nine books, you can find them here.
Eric R. Rasmussen is a novelist, composer, journalist and filmmaker. He is the author of ten 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 