About Rice
Genre
Rock
The San Diego-based hardcore band Rice was a goofy satire of anarchist punk that remained startlingly true to the band's name. Their lyrics had all the militant sloganeering and impassioned rhetoric of standard-issue political hardcore, but instead of freedom, every song they wrote was about...rice. Musically, Rice's horn section made them roughly comparable to the soul-inflected Nation of Ulysses or to trash-punkers Rocket From the Crypt, with whom Rice shared personnel. Rice's lineup featured lead singer Rop Vasquez (also of the PeeChees, the Lefties, the Creeps, and Semiautomatic), guitarist Jason Soares (also of Physics, Thingy, and Aspects of Physics), bassist Carlos Cañedo (PeeChees, Beehive & the Barracudas), drummer Matt Anderson (the head of local indie Gravity Records), trombonist Dustin Milsap (Beehive & the Barracudas), and saxophonist Apollo 9 (Rocket From the Crypt). There were also auxiliary contributions from several others, including drummer Charles Clayton and Rocket From the Crypt hornman JC 2000. Formed in 1991, Rice issued their debut single, "In Rice We Survive," on the Vinyl Communications label. They appeared on the Lookout Records sampler Can of Pork in 1992, and in 1994 Lookout issued their only album, F**k You This Is Rice. Its members had plenty of other projects, and having taken the joke as far as it would go, Rice subsequently called it a day. ~ Steve Huey
