Boyd Rice

Boyd Rice

Boyd Blake Rice (born July or December 1956) is an American experimental sound artist under the monicker of NON since the mid-1970s, archivist, actor, photographer, author, member of the Partridge Family Temple religious group, co-founder of the UNPOP art movement and current staff writer for Modern Drunkard Magazine.

Music

Boyd Rice creates music under his own name, as well as under the moniker of NON and with contributors under various other project names.

Early sound experiments

Rice started creating experimental noise recordings in 1975, drawing on his interest in tape machines and bubblegum pop sung by female vocalists such as Little Peggy March and Ginny Arnell. One of his earliest efforts consisted entirely of a loop of every time Lesley Gore sang the word "cry". After initially creating recordings simply for his own listening, he later started to give performances, and eventually make records. His musical project NON grew out of these early experiments; he reportedly selected the name because "it implies everything and nothing".

Techniques and implementations

From his earliest recordings, Rice has experimented with both sound and the medium through which that sound is conveyed. His methods of expanding upon the listening possibilities for recorded music were simple. On his second seven-inch, he had 2-4 extra holes punched into the record for "multi axial rotation". Another early LP was titled Play At Any Speed. While working exclusively with vinyl, he employed locked grooves that allowed listeners to create their own music. He was one of the first artists, after John Cage, to treat turntables as instruments and developed various techniques for scratching. Rice has been treating sounds from vinyl recordings as early as 1975.

NON

Under the name NON, originally with second member Robert Turman, Rice has recorded several seminal noise music albums, and collaborated with experimental music/dark folk artists like Current 93, Death In June and Rose McDowall. Most of his music has been released on the Mute Records label. Rice has also collaborated with Foetus, Tony Wakeford of Sol Invictus and Michael Moynihan of Blood Axis. His later albums have often been explicitly conceptual.

On Might! (1995), Rice layers portions of "Ragnar Redbeard"'s Social Darwinist harangue, Might is Right over sound beds of looped noise and manipulated frequencies. 1997's God and Beast explores the intersection in the soul of man's physical and spiritual natures over the course of an album that alternates abrasive soundscapes with passages of tranquility.

In 2006 Rice returned to the studio to record raw vocal sound sources for a collaboration with Industrial percussionist/ethnomusicologist Z'ev. In addition he and long time friend Giddle Partridge are recording an album titled LOVE/LOVE-BANG/BANG!, under the band name of Giddle & Boyd. Giddle & Boyd have had much airplay in 2006 on KROQ 106.7 FM, thanks to DJ Rodney Bingenheimer being a big fan of their work together. The release date is set for early 2007.

Crowd control

Early NON performances were designed to offer choice to audience members who might otherwise expect only a prefabricated and totally passive entertainment experience. Rice has stated that he considers his performances to be "de-indoctrination rites". Rice has performed using a shoe polisher, the "rotoguitar" (an electric guitar with an electric fan on it), and other homemade instruments. He has also used found sounds, played at a volume just below the threshold of pain, to entice his audiences to endure his high decibel sound experiments.

Rice coupled his aural assaults with psychological torture on audiences in Den Haag, the Netherlands, by shining exceedingly bright lights in their faces that were deliberately placed just out of reach. As their frustration mounted, Rice states that he:

..continued to be friendly to the audience, which made them even madder, because they were so mad and I didn't care! They were shaking their fists at me, and I thought that at any minute there'd be a riot. So I took it as far as I thought I could, and then thanked them and left.

Re/Search Books

He became widely known through his involvement in V. Vale's RE/Search Books. He is profiled in RE/Search #6/7: Industrial Culture Handbook and Pranks!. In Pranks, Rice described his experience in 1976 when he tried to give President Ford's wife, Betty Ford, a skinned sheep's head on a silver platter. In this interview, he emphasized the consensus nature of reality and the havoc that can be wreaked by refusing to play by the collective rules that dictate most people's perception of the external world.

Church Of Satan

In the mid-1980s Rice became close friends with Anton LaVey, founder and High Priest of the Church of Satan, and was made a Priest, then later a Magister in the Council of Nine of the Church. The two mutually admired much of the same music and shared a similar misanthropic outlook. Each had been inspired by Might is Right in fashioning various works: LaVey in his seminal Satanic Bible and Rice in several recordings. He also dated Anton LaVey's daughter Zeena LaVey in the 1980's. Rice's involvement with the Church of Satan largely diminished after LaVey's death in 1997.

Gnosticism

Rice has done extensive research into Gnosticism as well as Grail legends and Merovingian lore, sharing this research in Dagobert's Revenge and The Vessel of God.

In 2000, along with Tracy Twyman, editor of Dagobert's Revenge, Rice filmed a special on the Rennes-le-Chateau for the program In Search of... on Fox television. (The segment was later included in the 2002 version of In Search of... on the Sci Fi Channel.)

Social Darwinism

Boyd Rice's Social Darwinist outlook eventually led to him founding the Social Darwinist think tank called The Abraxas Foundation, named after the ancient Gnostic god Abraxas.

The organization promotes authoritarianism, totalitarianism, misanthropism, elitism, is antidemocratic, and has some philosophical overlap with the Church of Satan. During an interview with Christian talk show host Bob Larson, Boyd Rice described the basic philosophy of the foundation as being "The strong rule the weak, and the clever rule the strong".

Controversy

In 1989, Rice and Bob Heick of the American Front were photographed for Sassy Magazine wearing uniforms and brandishing knives. While Rice would later recall it as a prank, the photo has caused boycotts and protests at many of Rice's appearances. When asked if he regrets the photo, Rice stated, "I don't care. I don't think I ever made a wrong move. The bad stuff is just good. America loves its villains".

This photograph was additionally published in the book Blood in the Face: The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads, and the Rise of a New White Culture by James Ridgeway.

Rice has responded to accusations of fascism by stating:

I've always done everything at my disposal to avoid labeling what I do, or to avoid being labeled myself... To be beyond any existing classification has always pleased me. Unfortunately, I have learned over the years that when you refuse to be categorized, there's a world full of people (all entirely less well qualified) who are only too eager to pigeonhole what you do or think. That the pigeonholing is generally more a reflection of what they think, or assume, is fairly obvious— The will to label will always prevail over what's being labeled, usually at the expense of either truth or understanding...

I have never made any secret of any of my thoughts or areas of interest. I've always been honest, open, and upfront. I have never pretended to be a nice guy, because I'm not. It's fairly impossible to remain true to oneself and still be a "nice guy." Similarly, only people as misanthropic as myself can be counted on not to have to lie to others, since we have the unique luxury of not caring what sort of opinions others formulate about us...

When all is said and done, I have no great quarrel with being labeled a "fascist." While it is not the whole story, it implies (to me) a sort of Marquis De Sade worldview that sees life in terms of master and slave, strong and weak, predator and prey. I know such views are highly unfashionable, but to me they seem fairly consistent with what I've seen to be true. If others choose to see the world in terms of sugar, spice and everything nice, that's certainly their prerogative, and I would never dream of trying to tell them otherwise. However, I might suggest that they always keep a loaded pistol on the off chance that they could possibly be mistaken.

In 1986, Rice appeared on White Aryan Resistance founder Tom Metzger's TV show, Race and Reason. Speaking with Metzger and co-host Tom Padgett, Rice discussed the relevance of his music to white power movements in Britain and America.

Rice has also written a controversial article "R.A.P.E (Revolt Against Penis Envy)" in which he seemingly encourages men to rape women in order to show that men have a superior status. He has, however, stated that the article was written lightly, but still says it is based on facts.

In Summer 2008, the old footage from the Metzger interview which appared on YouTube causes mayhem in the industrial music scene. even headlining the popular scene magazine Side-Line on July 21st. One thing to note with the Metzger interview is that Rice promotes the equally controversal Death in June.

Various contributions

Rice has documented the writings of Charles Manson in his role as contributing editor of The Manson File. Rice was a featured guest on Talk Back, a radio program hosted by the Evangelical Christian Bob Larson. In total, Rice made three appearances on Larson's program.

Personal life

Although Rice was sometimes reported to possess the world's largest Barbie collection, he confessed in a 2003 interview with Brian M. Clark to owning only a few.

Tiki Boyd's

Boyd Rice was recently involved in creating a Tiki bar called Tiki Boyd's at the East Coast Bar in Denver, Colorado. Rice decorated the entire establishment out of his own pocket due to his fondness of Tiki culture, asking an open tab at the bar in return. Boyd has long expressed a love of Tiki culture, in contrast to the other elements of his public persona.

Tiki Boyd's was given its name in his honor. Due to disagreements between Rice and the owners, Rice pulled out of the deal and reclaimed all of his Tiki decorations. The future of the bar as it remains now is uncertain. Rice plans to re-establish another Tiki Bar elsewhere in Denver.

Discography

Year	Title	Under
1978	The Black Album (Boyd Rice album)	Boyd Rice
1978	Pagan Muzak - 7" with multiple locked grooves	NON
1982	Physical Evidence	NON
1983	Easy Listening For The Hard Of Hearing	Boyd Rice and Frank Tovey
1987	Blood and Flame	NON
1990	Music, Martinis and Misanthropy	Boyd Rice and Friends
1991	Easy Listening for Iron Youth - The Best of NON	NON
1992	In the Shadow of the Sword	NON
1993	Ragnarok Rune	Boyd Rice
1994	The Monopoly Queen (7")	The Monopoly Queen (w/ Mary Ellen Carver & Combustible Edison)
1995	Might!	NON
1995	Hatesville	The Boyd Rice Experience
1996	Heaven Sent	Scorpion Wind (w/ Douglas P. & John Murphy)
1997	God & Beast	NON
1999	Receive the Flame	NON
2000	The Way I Feel	Boyd Rice
2000	Solitude - 7" with locked grooves on B-side	NON
2001	Wolf Pact	Boyd Rice and Fiends
2002	Children of the Black Sun	NON
2004	Baptism By Fire (Live)	Boyd Rice and Fiends
2004	Terra Incognita: Ambient Works 1975 to Present	Boyd Rice/NON
2004	Alarm Agents	Death In June & Boyd Rice

Films

• Pranks! TV! (1986, VHS), directed by V. Vale, RE/Search Publications
• Charles Manson Superstar (1989)
• Speak of the Devil (1995, VHS), about Anton LaVey, directed by Nick Bougas, Wavelength Video
• Pearls Before Swine (1999), directed by Richard Wolstencroft
• Nixing The Twist (2000, DVD), directed by Frank Rich, High Crime Films
• The Many Moods of Boyd Rice (2002, VHS), Predatory Instinct Productions
• Church of Satan Iinterview Archive (2003, DVD), Purging Talon
• Iconoclast (2009 release date) Directed by Larry Wessel (www.iconoclastmovie.com)
• Modern Drunkard (In Production), directed by Frank Rich

Performance

• Live in Osaka (DVD), features concert performance from Osaka, Japan, in 1989, with Michael Moynihan, Tony Wakeford, Douglas P., and Rose McDowall. Also includes Rice-made films Invocation (One) and Black Sun

Print works featuring Rice

• RE/Search No. 6: Industrial Culture Handbook, RE/Search Publications (1983, ISBN 0-940642-07-7)
• RE/Search No. 10: Incredibly Strange Films: A Guide to Deviant Films, RE/Search Publications (1986, ISBN 0-940642-09-3)
• RE/Search No. 11: Pranks!. RE/Search Publications (1986, ISBN 0-9650469-8-2)
• The Manson File edited by Nikolas Schreck, Amok Press (1988, ISBN 0-941693-04-X)
• Apocalypse Culture: Expanded & Revised Edition edited by Adam Parfrey, Feral House, (1990, ISBN 0-922915-05-9).
• ANSWER Me!, issue #3 (1993, ISBN 0-9764035-3-6)
• ANSWER Me!, issue #4 (1994)
• Apocalypse Culture II, edited by Adam Parfrey, Feral House (2000, ISBN 0-922915-57-1).
• Paranoia: The Conspiracy Reader, issue 32, Spring 2003.