Sataniloungedustrial all-star Boyd Rice was in town last week to promote an exhibition of his paintings and played a little show in the back room of Passerby for the city’s black-turtleneck-and-leather-blazer’d elite, so we dusted off our Docs and grabbed a stack of our old teenage hatezines to see what he’s been up to.

The first part of the set was pretty standard stuff–Boyd came out and went “puh” a couple of times into the microphone, futzed around with his box of dials to loop them into this sort of wavering sound-wall where one “puh” was the beat and one of the others was all drawn out and high-pitched, then started shouting things over it like “Do you want… total war” and “Show the world… an iron will.”

Then he started working in this weird new material, like having low, unbroken feedback hum over the rest of the sound and getting this bearded guy in a hat to come and tweak with some of the knobs and cryptically intone “Two, two, two” into the mic.

We were starting to wonder whether he was just really pushing our musical limits or dealing with an equipment failure (especially when he began apologizing for the gallery not having a soundman), but then this timid little Crispin-elf edged his way out of the crowd and asked “Do you think maybe it’s the delay?” and we were like, “No, no way. That’s way too perfect.” We weren’t on-the-ball enough to catch the initial encounter, but we did manage to get the pussyfooted denouement—chalk one up to the king of challenging performances.

After the show there was kind of a protracted meet-and-greet where everyone was milling around and explaining their lapel pins and such. We had wanted to ask Boyd what he thought about TV’s House, but our associate editor got tired of waiting for an “in” (read: pussied out) so we just got one of our reviewers to steal the drill Boyd uses to do “rotoguitar” and headed out.






















































While we stand by our decision to do this and the sense it made at the time, we’re kind of at a loss for what to do with the drill now that it’s in our possession, so we’re opening it up to you, internet. Should we attempt a ransom or just auction it off to goths? Suggest below.

Boyd’s paintings are being shown at the Mitchell Algus Gallery from now until March 10.