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Posts Tagged ‘punk’

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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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.

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Salon de la Guerre’s New Alt-Rock Album

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

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!

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My New Album is Punky

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 17, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Salon de la Guerre’s 27th album, Digital Moon, is now available on Amazon, Spotify, iTunes, Pandora, and other sites where music is streamed or sold. The new album is mostly punk and alternative rock influenced by the likes of the Ramones, Husker Du, the Replacements and the Pixies.

As I say on my Bandcamp page, it’s a work on the themes of politics, futurism, environmentalism, the desire for outer space and how we’re also still chained to more worldly human desire. The album considers the ramifications of the plastic that we are shedding into our breathable air, the spirituality that is either gained or lost by our automobiles, the desire to orbit the Earth and the yearning for things such as robots and Real Dolls that sometimes free us to live to our spiritual potential and sometimes hold us back.

I made the album at my home studio in New York, and it features instrumental guitar performances alongside a lot of electronic tomfoolery.

As always, the album was written, performed and produced by yours truly.

Here’s a sample of the latest album:

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They Tore Up the Road To Town

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , , , , on April 21, 2021| Leave a Comment »

From the forthcoming album “Digital Moon,” a new song by Salon de la Guerre.

They ripped up the road that takes you downtown
Some joker cut the phone line out
I don’t know my spit cup from my drink cup
And we just dump the trash all down the mountain

Kids that were raised good turn bad from boredom
Got to shoot at the squatters cross the way
My watermelon grew the size of thimbles
And I’m feeling like a failure every day.

Pavement’s coming
Any day now
Water well is
Drying out
Pavement’s coming
Any day now
We’ll just have to figure it out

You were out there pissing on pool tables
Someone’s going to ruin all the felt
You were vandalizing motorcycles
And whoever smells is the ones that dealt

There’s nothing I can do but steal ammonia
And sell it to someone with chemistry
You can’t remain alone out in the boonies
Your sanity gets lost out in the trees

Pavement’s coming
Any day now
Water well is
Drying out
Pavement’s coming
We’ll see soon
Water well will dig us out

Written, performed and produced by Eric Randolph Rasmussen. Copyright 2021.

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Are You Ready?

Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre, tagged , , , , , , on April 6, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Salon de la Guerre’s new punk album, Digital Moon, will be available in the next few weeks. Thirteen loud, fast songs about life in our confused times. Some of it I played on guitar, some of it is fabricated with my clever software.

I am still polishing the album, but this is what marketers call “creating pre-awareness.” So consider yourselves pre-aware.

As usual, all the songs were written, performed and produced by yours truly.

The album will be available on Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, Bandcamp and other platforms where music is (still) sold.

Here’s a sample:

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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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