NON: Pagan Muzak (Greybeat)
Purchased through eBay
This blog is something of a diversion, a trifle, a shade frivolous. I've been both intending to, and questioning, whether I should write about this and similar records. Here goes.
There are some records that, if someone looked them over after I'm gone, I might have felt embarrassment. I don't mean The Ethel Merman Disco Album, which I freely admit I own.
So what is there to be embarrassed by this record? Its appearance doesn't seem to be outrageous: a front image of some sort of tomb or temple lined with skulls, the back a single image of the artist, all in stark black and white.
And the record itself is novel: a 7" album housed in a 12" cover, with seventeen lock grooves one side one, repeated on side two. Playable at any speed. Standard 33+1/3 sounds right, the tracks largely like machine sounds. To be played loud. A hole drilled off center for off-axis playback.
In other words, a very novel release, quite original in its presentation and performance, in ways that I've seen repeated since. The RRR-100 7" has fifty lock grooves on each side (I happen to be one of them), one hundred artists represented. RRRecords upped the ante with RRR-500, five hundred artists in toto on a 12" LP. RRR-1000 takes it even further, though I understand there are tracking issues with that one depending on your turntable.
My friend tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE released an LP with an off-axis hole cut. I wouldn't accuse him of aping NON, just that it's a similar technique. He's also released an album with multiple lock grooves.
So why am I potentially embarrassed to own this record?
NON is one Boyd Rice. NON is the "band" name for his noise-oriented projects. There are many (and often conflicting) reports about Boyd: that he can be great company, engaging, funny. A well-documented prankster, lover of EZ listening records. He was also supposedly an absentee father to a special needs child, a "Men's Rights" advocate, priest in the Church of Satan. There's a video of him happily talking to American White Nationalist Tom Metzger about how you never see black people at his noise concerts. An asshole Fascist/White Nationalist.
Allegedly. Allegedly allegedly allegedly. I don't know any of these things first hand, though I have watched the Metzger video, easily found on Youtube. You have access to Google, look for yourself.
I first came to know about Boyd through the Re/Search Industrial Culture Handbook. In some ways I was most impressed with him, because (according to the text) he had the purest of intentions: he enjoyed noise music, and the sound of things like skipping records. None of the neo-paganism of Genesis P-Orridge, or the occultism of Z'ev, or systems paranoia of SPK. Someone who enjoyed creating and listening to noise. To me, that's a high calling; if you don't find music you want to hear, make it yourself. That in itself is honorable.
Since the time I bought this record (a prize in my eyes at the time), I've seen too much evidence of his fascist leanings. Is it all a joke to him? The fact of him recording with Death In June (known to be Nazi sympathizers) doesn't help his case. But what do I know?
There are many examples of bands/artists playing with fascist and even Nazi imagery. Sometimes ironically, sometimes not, and sometimes who knows? I'm thinking of a tape released by Ramleh on Broken Flag records, Rockwell Hate. It uses an audio letter sent by George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party, to his followers. The cassette is played while the band provides a backdrop of blistering power electronics. My sense is that it's a joke, that they're making fun of that racist moron by supplying a backdrop of the ultimate entartete musik. Hitler would have never approved.
That's just my intuition, but again, what do I really know? If I'm proven wrong I will happily rescind my comments. I face the fact that it might become necessary for me to remove this posting.
I'm also thinking of Sid Vicious wearing a swastika t-shirt. I'm certain he just wanted to outrage people.
So where am I left with Boyd Rice and NON records? Isn't the history of the arts filled with shitty people? Gesualdo murdered his wife in cold blood, as I've written here before. That happened four and a quarter centuries ago. At the time terrible; now, an interesting footnote? And what of Miles Davis' and Charles Mingus' know abuse of women?
Nonetheless, I just don't think I can abide by what could be Boyd's racist and fascist leanings. I hate to waffle on things like this; it's just that the facts are murky.
I should probably sell this. Too bad, I love weird lock groove records like this.
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