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Posts Tagged ‘pop’

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:

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‘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!

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My First Music Video: ‘Lanternfly’

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , , , on November 23, 2021| 2 Comments »

Salon de la Guerre has released its first music video. It’s for the song “Lanternfly,” which appears on the album Wings Made of Cash. The video was directed by yours truly.

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Would This Song Have Been A Hit In The ’90s?

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , , , on June 27, 2020| Leave a Comment »

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‘Amphibious Grandkids’

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 6, 2019| Leave a Comment »

The latest Salon de la Guerre album drops this week. It’s called From Sour To Cinnamon, and it’s a slate of big candy-like pop songs with a dark center. Check out this track from the album, set to release Monday.

All the wrongs on this album were made by yours truly, including music, lyrics and production.

“Amphibious Grandkids”
By Eric Randolph Rasmussen
Copyright 2019

Take them to the aquarium
Take them to the Grand Canyon
Set your grandkids loose to swim
While you sit at look at ’em.

The froggy skin and the set of gills
You never knew we’d have them
But these fish were spawned from your loins
You’d never know to look at them

Your grandchild no longer walks the earth
Or plays his video game

A patronymic and a set of fins
And the memory of land
Your legacy in sedimentary rock
Your fossil of vestigial hands
Cause you bequeathed your sons a water world
While you drove your car around

Your grandchild no longer walks the earth
Or plays his video game
Now he plays with a set of flippers
But still has your name

A patronymic and a set of fins
And the memory of land
Your legacy in sedimentary rock
Your fossil of vestigial hands

Cause you bequeathed your sons a water world
While you drove your car around
Once you thought you’d take Manhattan
Now it’s all Long Island Sound

I don’t believe that he glitch-killed me
It was crazy enough to kill you
Amphibious grandkids swim away
Too hungry to be mad at you

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‘A Kid’s Inside’

Posted in Music, Poetry, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , , on September 26, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Pointing to the surprise eggs hatching toys and puzzles

Helicopter to the rescue; found out about my Hot Wheels

Daddy, how will it ever rise the plane outside my window?

Cause the airfoil will lift it up, son, and that thought makes him humble

 

Daddy’s dancing, parts the dance floor like the Red Sea

Because I could not stop for death, he kindly did the cabbage patch for me

 

Plastic saucer spinning down

Snow cakes up the mountain

A toddler picks his daddy up

Someone had to be in charge then

Remember to keep pedaling, faster when you’re falling

 

Zipper ride, airboat, ice skates, checkers, Cyclone, teacup ride

Race with trains, jump from airplanes to keep the kid inside

 

I get slow and you get fast, but I work so hard to keep up

A threatening hill and a crashing bike, it’s OK just a little blood

And he hates sleep there’s a brittle moon and he cries cause he won’t see it

That’s OK—you’re sad right now but a new day will come and you can rise and greet it

 

It’s OK, we don’t have to play you can stare outside the window

There’s a whole world inside your head, much more than you’ll ever know

But I teach you and then you teach me things that I forgot from pride

I help you and you help me; don’t forget to keep a kid inside

 

Don’t forget Dad that you have to keep the kid inside

 

–Eric Rasmussen

(These are lyrics from my 2019 song “A Kid’s Inside,” from Salon de la Guerre’s upcoming pop-rock album, From Sour to Cinnamon.)

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My New Pop Album Is Coming

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , on September 26, 2019| Leave a Comment »

From Sour To CinnamonThis might be a little surprising, since I just released an alt-country album two months ago, but my “band” Salon de la Guerre is now refreshed and relaxed after its (um, OK, my) vacation to Florida and is ready to rock again.

Perhaps it was five days of splashy pastels and silly amusement park rides, but I started writing pop songs on the plane ride home and soon had 11 of them to package into a new album. I pulled out the guitar a couple of weeks ago for the song I’ve attached here, a paean to youth and optimism and joy and nostalgia. Not the usual Salon de la Guerre stomping grounds, I’m sure you longtime (sometime, anytime?) fans will agree. It kind of sounds like something out of the ’90s, right?

“A Kid’s Inside” is slated to appear on my next album, From Sour To Cinnamon, a work of dark pop songs that I’m finishing up now. This is not only my 21st album, but the one that helped me mark a new milestone: my 300th songwriting credit.

Please enjoy this taste of my next phase. Because let’s face it, by the time you’ve digested it, I’ll probably be in another phase.

(FYI: My gifted 8-year-old son Xander helped me with the artwork on the new batch of songs.)

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My 19th Album, ‘Bleed’ Now Available

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , , , , , on March 31, 2019| Leave a Comment »

BleedSalon de la Guerre has just released its 19th album, Bleed. It’s a collection of punky, poppy and occasionally soulful songs that sometimes drifts into country-ish singing and which features at least one of my out-of-control guitar solos.

The album is now available on Amazon, iTunes, CD Baby and Spotify, among many other music streaming services in the U.S. and abroad.

I can’t speak for comparisons, but my friends say the album reminds them of Mark Lemhouse, the Pixies and/or Black Francis, Sugar and/or Bob Mould and Matthew Sweet. If you’d asked me, I would have said that I’d had the Rolling Stones, Roxy Music, X and (yes) the Pixies in mind, but only because I always have these groups in mind when I’m doing anything. I have two songs where the harmony vocals are probably the major attraction and I think I sound a little like Seals & Crofts. Not something I would have planned. At some point, your inspiration and direction must compromise with the reality of your voice and what it does well. I often wish I had a Sonic Youth voice, but I don’t really.

I wrote, performed and produced the album and I’m responsible for all the sounds and solos, some of which are on actual guitar, some of which make use of Apple’s wonderful Garage Band software for the iPhone.

Here is a sample of one of the new songs, with lyrics:

“Praise Javelin” by Salon de la Guerre
Music and Lyrics By Eric Rasmussen
Copyright 2019

Now the time has come to praise javelin
Civil war is now your brand
Biblical violence and the handshake of a salesman
A peaceful finger turn to warful hand

Sky worshipper protecting the land
Easy to use; easy to understand;
You see crosses and cross the land

You turned to homicidal ideation
When the masses came and turned on your man
You speak cant and speak the tongues of babble land
Fashion words into a fisted hand

Sky worshipper protecting the land
Easy to use; easy to understand
Biblical violence is now your brand

Where pretty baby did you get that complex?
Was it the woody finish of a vintage wrath?
Praise the father and his heart full of GORE-TEX
Praise the mother made of wire and cans

Sky worshipper protecting the land
Easy to use; easy to understand;
You see crosses and cross the land

There’s a scrap of the prophecy in my hand
No longer tied to the ideals of my homeland
There’s a scrap of the prophecy in my hand
And in my dreams, I inherit nothing but sand

 

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