Standing in Two Circles The Collected Works of Boyd Rice

by Boyd Rice

STANDING IN TWO CIRCLES is the first definitive and comprehensive compendium of the works of BOYD RICE, one of the most provocative and controversial underground figures of the post-punk era. A pioneering noise musician and countercultural maven, from the late 1970s to the present Rice has worked in an array of capacities, playing the roles musician, performer, artist, photographer, essayist, interviewer, editor, occult researcher, filmmaker, actor, orator, deejay, gallery curator and tiki bar designer, among others. First coming to prominence as an avant-garde audio experimentalist (recording under the moniker NON), Rice was a seminal founder of the first wave of industrial music in the late 1970s. In the 1980s, through collaborations with Re/Search Publications, Rice further established his position in underground with recountings of his uproarious pranks and the promotion of "incredibly strange" cult films and "industrial" culture. Rice's influence on subculture was further exerted through his vanguard exhibition of found photographs and readymade thrift store art, as well as his adamant endorsements of outsider music, tiki culture and bygone pop culture in general. Rice is also notorious for his public associations with nefarious figures both infamous and obscure, including friendships and ideological collusions with the likes of cult leader Charles Manson and Church Of Satan founder Anton LaVey, among others. His work continues to profoundly affect the countercultural underground at large, inspiring and enraging in equal measure. STANDING IN TWO CIRCLES

Essays 1986-2007 / Lyrics 1988-2007 / Art & Photography (38 plates)

STANDING IN TWO CIRCLES also includes an extensive biography of Boyd Rice from the 1970s to the present, by the book's editor, Brian M Clark.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Art

Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

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.

Boyd Rice is controversial for supposedly having social-darwinist extremist tendecies.

Reviews

[Djll]

I enjoyed Rice's contributions to Pranks! but after some years of experience it seems to me now the guy's just a professional asshole.

Nice work if you can get it.

[Michele · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know...just because you read a Boyd Rice book, or own a NON cd, it doesn't mean you're a fascist neo-Nazi misanthropic misogynist. Chances are, Rice is probably more misanthropic, and yeah, after his encounter with Lisa Suckdog, probably a misogynist.

Boyd Rice is of all things, one of the world's best known pranksters. Not to mention an expert of all things that fall under the current of pop culture.

This was an interesting read. Offensive, but Boyd Rice doesn't care if you get offended.

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boyd Rice, Standing in Two Circles: The Collected Writings of Boyd Rice (Creation, 2008)

For over thirty years, Boyd Rice has been one of music's most enduring enigmas. Ignored by most, despised by almost all the rest, and entirely uncaring, Rice has been pranking the music industry and its end-users for years, releasing albums of harsh, unlistenable loops that I'm not entirely sure anyone is actually supposed to enjoy. (Adam Parfrey, the head of Feral House books, declaims on Rice's music that the majority will loathe it, but for the sect few it is pure balm for the soul; this is as perfect a description of Rice's music as I've ever heard, and I can't add anything to it.) All the while, he's also been researching the philosophies and events that lie behind the music, and as a result has learned a great deal about a great many things. It would be a natural for someone with that much stored-up knowledge to become an essayist, along with everything else that he is. A number of Rice's essays have seen print, including a large number in Re/Search Publications' excellent books Pranks! and Incredibly Strange Films (Rice was the architect of both books, in fact), but a number of others have only seen print in magazines with minuscule runs, or never got published at all; a number of those essays are collected here, along with an extensive section of Rice's photographic work and an end section of lyrics to some of Rice's albums, both as a solo performer and under the NON moniker.

One of the things about reading work written by a lifelong prankster is that you can never quite be sure when Rice is yanking your chain. Given the number of essays collected her,e it does become a bit easier; there are subtle changes in tone that can tip the astute reader off. (Of course, some of them are more obvious than others, and some are just outright hilarious. That said, it's worth watching out; it's when we're laughing the hardest that the raconteur often slips in his most potent messages.) Rice's interests over the years have been eclectic and wide-ranging; we get an account of Rice's regular meetings with Charles Manson over a short period of time, deconstructions of Nazism and Monism, paeans to various types of alcohol, travelogues of Eastern Europe, an appreciation of Mondo Cane, and much, much more.

Like his music (and recent film work), Boyd Rice's essays are not for everyone. In fact, they're not for many. But in the written word, Rice is more accessible than in any other format, and it's possible that reading some of the thoughts behind the music may endear the music itself to some who wouldn't normally appreciate it. And one of my goals in life has always been the bringing of noise to a wider audience, no matter how much they hate it. (In fact, the more they hate it, the more determined I am.) Another tool to use in the service of that goal, especially one as intelligent as this one, couldn't be more welcome. ****

[Eirikir · Rating 5 out of 5]

If your interested in Satanism, the lost Arc, Drinking, Disneyland, and various other topics that have nothing really to do with the other, you'll love this. It's basically like talking to someone who knows a good deal about a lot with the exception of being pretentious and boring.

[Julieta · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some provocative ideas put in play, nothing you haven't read somewhere else though. And this whole boasting from switching reality tunnels (atheist-anarcho-gnostic-satanist-punk) just showcases a bit of inconsistency in part of the writer's mind. Yeah, not my thing.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

Polarizing. Boyd is a meany. We don't see eye to eye politically, etc., but he has some interesting things to do/say as an artist. Some of this is super compelling and then some is super boring. Boyd actually writes in a very dense way. I mean dense.

[Shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

It kinda' reads like the unfunny life of Andy Kaufman. You never know just how serious his connections were. I personally think he just liked to piss people off and got to meet a lot of interesting people while doing it. And I hate his photography.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Decades later I discovered that this place was the Fuhrerbunker, the place where Adolf Hitler and his Nazi cronies spent thier last weeks on earth. That's how bad the kids in East Berlin had it - they had to party in the anteroom of hell."

[SB Stokes · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing portrait of one of the most controversial men in America right now. A musician, magickian, shit-disturber, columnist and artist of some social importance is revealed through his own words, as shaped and edited by Brian M. Clark.

[Bood · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays from Boyd ranging from personal anecdotes to philosophical pieces. Some of the anecdotal pieces were my favorites. A fun read.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boyd Rice is a naughty, naughty man.

[Dennis Lorence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unfortunately the publisher refuses to pay his authors. I can't recommend purchasing it until the lawsuit is resolved.

This holds true for all creation titles.

[Stathis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The essence of humanity in one easy read