Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘new-music’

My 45th Album Hits The Streams

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 16, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I am very proud to announce that my 45th album, a rock-pop work, has just hit the streaming services.

It’s called The Green, Green Gas of Home and it’s been released under the name of my musical act, Salon de la Guerre. I recorded it over the summer. It’s a New Wave-y album with environmental and apocalyptic themes that touches on issues of dementia and memory, things that have affected those near to my heart. It’s got a little soul and a little krautrock.

A lot of the album was recorded with my Logic Pro software instruments, though I snuck in a guitar performance for sonic texture. As much as I loved working with my collaborator Christina E., who did some vocals on my last album, the latest work is, once again, all me all the time in my one-man-band mode.

I describe the album this way on my Bandcamp page:

“Salon de la Guerre’s 45th album is a mix of uptempo pop, rock and electronic songs with apocalyptic overtones about environmental calamity, mental decline, and the economies that emerge from civil collapse, as well as the toll these phenomena take on our families and interpersonal relationships. It’s also got a dose of hope.”

For those of you counting, I now have 586 songs in circulation. If you’re asking, “Does this guy have some kind of weird obsession with counting his songs in the hundreds, and is he excited somehow to say that he’s written almost 600 songs?” The answer is yes and yes. Asked and answered. Sue me.

You can now find The Green, Green Gas of Home available for streaming on services such as Pandora, Amazon Music, Apple Music, Bandcamp, YouTube and Spotify, among other many other platforms both domestic and global. (I still don’t offer physical media like CDs or vinyl, though I can always dream … one day … maybe … )

As usual, the album was written, arranged, performed and produced by me in my home studio in New York City. The album’s cover photo of the child in the gas mask is by Lisa5201.

You can listen to a sample here:

Read Full Post »

RIP David Johansen

Posted in Music, tagged , , , , , , , on March 1, 2025| Leave a Comment »

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.

Read Full Post »

My New Album, ‘Resting Horse Face’

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , , , , , , on February 5, 2025| Leave a Comment »

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.

And I promise: My novel is around the corner.

Enjoy the first tune off Resting Horse Face here:

Read Full Post »

‘Resting Horse Face’: A New Salon de la Guerre Album

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 28, 2025| Leave a Comment »

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.

Watch this space for the news!

Read Full Post »

No One Hears a Zen Busker

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 22, 2024| Leave a Comment »

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.

Read Full Post »