Boyd Rice

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.

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.

Rice was born on December 16, 1956 in Lemon Grove, California.

He became widely known through his involvement in V. Vale's RE/Search Publications.

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".

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 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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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