Boyd Rice | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Boyd Blake Rice |
| Also known as | NON |
| Born | December 16, 1956 Lemon Grove, California, U.S. |
| Origin | Denver, Colorado, U.S. |
| Genres | |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, composer, author |
| Instrument(s) | Tape machines, turntables |
| Years active | 1975–present |
| Labels | Mute |
Boyd Blake Rice (born December 16, 1956) is an American experimental sound/noise musician using the name of NON since the mid-1970s. A pioneer of industrial music, Rice was one of the first artists to use a sampler and turntable as an instrument.[1] He is also an archivist, actor, photographer, author, member of the Partridge Family Temple religious group, co-founder of the UNPOP art movement and former staff writer for the formerly defunct but now active Modern Drunkard magazine.[2]
Rice was born on December 16, 1956 in Lemon Grove, California.[3] He became widely known through his involvement in V. Vale's RE/Search Publications. He is profiled in RE/Search #6/7: Industrial Culture Handbook[4] and Pranks![5] 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.
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 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.
Rice's Social Darwinist outlook eventually led to him founding the Social Darwinist think tank called The Abraxas Foundation, along with co-founder Nikolas Schreck. The organization promotes authoritarianism, totalitarianism, misanthropism, and elitism, is antidemocratic, and has some philosophical overlap with the Church of Satan.
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.[6] In total, Rice made five appearances on Larson's program. During an interview, Rice described the basic philosophy of his foundation as being "The strong rule the weak, and the clever rule the strong".[7]
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.[8]
In 2000, along with Tracy Twyman, editor of Dagobert's Revenge, Rice filmed a special on Rennes-le-Château 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.) 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.[9] There is controversy regarding Boyd Rice's authorship and the authenticity of his contributions about Gnosticism and the Esoteric in writings during the phase with Tracy R. Twyman. There are letters which surfaced on the internet after Tracy's death, where she states that Boyd Rice took credit for her ideas, and that Tracy wrote the materials which Boyd Rice claimed for both Dagobert's Revenge and The Vessel of God. The website davincicodecoded.com [official website for Da Vinci Code Decoded by Martin Lunn] contains references to these letters regarding the authorship of The Vessel of God and Boyd Rice's working habits with regard to scholarly writing.
Rice was 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. Rice has long expressed a love of Tiki culture, in contrast to the other elements of his public persona.[10]
Tiki Boyd's was given its name in his honor.[11] 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.[10]
October 26, 2018, the teen magazine Galore premiered a music video for the song "Resort Beyond the Last Resort" by the band Collapsing Scenery that Rice starred in. The video was directed by Kansas Bowling and parodies Boyd's essay from Answer Me! "Revolt Against Penis Envy". In the video Rice goes to Casa Bonita in Denver and then is drugged and raped by a woman.[12]
Rice creates music under his own name, as well as under the moniker of NON and with contributors under various other project names.
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".
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".[13] 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[14] and developed various techniques for scratching. Rice has been treating sounds from vinyl recordings as early as 1975.[15]
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 Frank Tovey of Fad Gadget, Tony Wakeford of Sol Invictus and Michael Jenkins 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 & 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, modern primitive percussionist/ethnomusicologist Z'EV. In addition, he and long-time friend of twenty years Giddle Partridge planned an album titled LOVE/LOVE-BANG/BANG!, under the band name of Giddle & Boyd. After the limited edition release of a bubblegum pink, heart-shaped vinyl E.P. titled, Going Steady With Peggy Moffitt. In early 2010, Rice announced that he and Giddle Partridge would focus on solo projects/albums for the time being.
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 The Hague, the Netherlands, by shining in their faces exceedingly bright lights 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.[4]
After dropping out of high school at the age of 17, Rice began an in-depth study of early 20th-century art movements, producing his own abstract black and white paintings and experimental photographs. Early on, he met European art historian and gallery owner Arturo Schwarz, with whom he began a long correspondence. Schwarz, a biographer of Duchamp and Man Ray, encouraged Rice to pursue his art, no matter what. And he did. Though he would later shift his focus to sound, he has never stopped creating visual art and has given a number of one man shows over the years.[16]
In the mid-1970s Rice devoted a great deal of time to experimental photography, developing a process by which he could produce "photographs of things which don't exist".[17] He had a one-man show of the photos in the early 1980s at Richard Peterson's Pink & Pearl Gallery in San Diego, which was documented in the local press, the San Diego Union and Evening Tribune. He has never revealed the means by which he made these photos, and has stated publicly that the secret will go to the grave with him. Some of these photos can be seen in his book Standing in Two Circles (Creation Press, 2008).
Over the years, Boyd Rice's writings have been translated into at least six languages.[18] His collected writings were published in 2008 by Creation Press. A French language edition followed on Camion Noir.
In 2009, his book NO was published by Heartworm Press. This was widely regarded[by whom?] as a book defining Rice's personal philosophy. Rice defined the book as merely a "laundry list" of things he didn't believe in.[citation needed] He later stated in an interview with WFMU's Beware of the Blog, "sometimes the things you don't believe are more important than what you do believe".
In October 2011, Heartworm Press published Rice's Twilight Man, a noir memoir about his life in 1980s San Francisco.[citation needed]
Rice told one interviewer, "I'm utterly apolitical".[19] He is a registered Independent.[19] Rice considers all politicians to be "dissimulators".[20] Rice has also stated that he considers ideology itself to be toxic and that he rejects the concept of ideology; Rice has designed T-shirts that read "Ideology Is Toxic".[19] Rice has also expressed the opinion that "the far left and the far right [overlap]" because Rice considers both intolerant, saying that "both want to take away people’s rights if they have the power to do so".[19] In 2019, Rice said regarding the Presidency of Donald Trump that "It has made the United States into this kind of reality TV show where the populace is behaving like an audience members on a Jerry Springer show", which Rice considered "entertaining to watch".[19] Rice designed a T-shirt which reads "Victimhood is Powerful", and explained in an interview that the shirt was inspired by the MeToo movement, saying that "There’s a certain segment of the population for whom being victimized is the ultimate form of heroism, and I don’t understand that."[21]
In 1989, Rice and Bob Heick of the white nationalist American Front organization were photographed for Sassy 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."[22]
More controversy has resulted because of Rice's appearance on Race and Reason,[23] a public-access television cable TV show hosted by white supremacist Tom Metzger. Rice has claimed not to be a Nazi in numerous interviews[24] whilst his friend Rose McDowall has claimed he has never said anything racist nor endorsed Nazism to her.[25] However, Stewart Home has claimed that Rice is a supporter of Nazism.[26] Boyd Rice was associated with Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey[27] and has collaborated with Adam Parfrey,[28] who was Jewish.[29]
On August 8, 1988, Boyd Rice was among the performers at 8/8/88 at the Strand Theater in San Francisco, which was locally heavily advertised and sold out, billed as "An Evening of Apocalyptic Delight". Rice appeared with the band Radio Werewolf as well as Zeena Lavey, daughter of the founder of the Church of Satan, and Adam Parfrey. Rice reports that, "Minutes after they took the stage in their Teutonic garb, the audience fled in droves" though others present that night did not see anyone leaving.[30]
| Year | Title | Under |
|---|---|---|
| 1976[31] | The Black Album | Boyd Rice |
| 1977 | Mode of Infection/Knife Ladder – 7" | NON |
| 1978 | Pagan Muzak – 7" with multiple locked grooves | NON |
| 1982 | Rise – 12" | NON |
| 1982 (rec. 1977–82) | Physical Evidence | NON |
| 1983 | Sickness of Snakes / Nightmare Culture | Boyd Rice & COIL / Boyd Rice & Current 93 |
| 1984 (rec. 1981) | Easy Listening for the Hard of Hearing | Boyd Rice and Frank Tovey |
| 1985 | Sick Tour – Live in Holland | NON |
| 1987 (rec. 1983) | 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 | I'm Just Like You | The Tards (8" single by Boyd Rice & Adam Parfrey) |
| 1993 | Ragnarok Rune | Boyd Rice |
| 1993 | Seasons in the Sun | Spell |
| 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) |
| 1996 | Ralph Gean: A Star Unborn | Boyd Rice Presents |
| 1996 | Death's Gladsome Wedding: Hymns and Marches from Transylvania's Notorious Legionari Movement | Boyd Rice Presents |
| 1997 | God & Beast | NON |
| 1999 | Receive the Flame | NON |
| 1999 | Pagan Muzak – 7" with multiple locked grooves Rerelease | 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 |
| 2002 | The Registered Three | Boyd Rice & Friends (C.D. Single) |
| 2002 | Music for Pussycats: Girl Groups | Boyd Rice Presents |
| 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 |
| 2005 | The Very Best of Little Fyodor's Greatest Hits! | Boyd Rice Presents |
| 2008 | Boyd Rice and Z'EV | Boyd Rice and Z'EV |
| 2008 | Going Steady With Peggy Moffitt | Giddle & Boyd |
| 2012 | Back to Mono | NON |
| 2020 | Blast of Silence | NON |
