Rich La Bonté (1946) is an American musician, writer, editor. La Bonté has five published novels: Susan and The Wolf (1989), Useful Humans (1990), Simple Deities (2002), The Greater Future (2003), Many Teeth (2005) and the short story collection Yellowflower (2005).
In the late 1960s, La Bonté worked for NYC documentary and industrial filmmaker Ted Steeg as a production assistant and eventually as a sound editor and film editor. During that time he met director Mark Rappaport and appeared as an actor in two of Rappaport’s films, Casual Relations (1973) and the title role in his award-winning feature Mozart in Love (1975).
Rich La Bonté was a musician
from his early teens and was lead singer of the upstate La Bonté created fLAtDiSk SoftWorks
as a freeware company in the late 20th Century. At that time fLAtDiSk was
the home of
fLAtDiSk Fanzine (a
Xeroxed music rag from 1976-1983), and fLAtDiSk Records (a vinyl subsidiary
of Dave Gibson's Moxie Record Company.) fLAtDiSk Records had several
obscure 20th Century releases, the most notable being the
Kim Fowley Jr.:
Son of Frankenstein LP, which La Bonté co-wrote and co-produced with record producer
Kim Fowley
for Moxie Records.
The record spawned the frequently rediscovered college radio hit
Invasion of the
Polaroid People and was later re-released
by Marilyn Records on CD as Kim Fowley’s
Bad News from the Underworld La Bonté released the classic
R.
Stevie Moore red vinyl single
New
Wave in 1979 for Working for a computer systems
integrator in Los Angeles from 1985-2001, La Bonté
experimented with virtual reality for the PC, creating fLAtDiSk VR Dreams in
the early 90s -
a series of virtual reality worlds for Rich La Bonté continues to compose and release free music
to the web via his fLAtDiSk NeTWoRk websites. He currently lists 17 albums
on his Absolutely Free Music
site, with all selections available as free MP3 downloads.
fLAtDiSk has given away free music files since the early 1990s. Absolutely Free Music! offers only free MP3s and they're legal, so don't fear the reaper. Collect 'em all! No sign-ins, pop-ups, spam, email scams, memberships, bids, credit cards, or bad links! Just lots of weird music you can download for free!
Peace began as an eXoNews poll site in 2003 to measure visitors' response to the Iraq war. The site has since become a depository for blatantly anti-war clip-art, posters, music and links - all absolutely free, of course. fLAtDiSk respects our military and those who choose to serve but we do not think war is a rational political option in the 21st Century. Most of our visitors prefer Peace to the alternative but all are welcome.
fLAtfiLMs is where you find videos you'll never see on American television. Like the new hit "Life Is A Book" or cult favs "Killer in the Rain" or "Herman Gleib and the Paradigm of Evil" or "Everybody Wants A Bomb" and "Coco Escapes". We also have some unusual FlashToons and odds and many ends we've collected over the years. It's harmless stuff and no porn or violence (unless you count actual atom bombs or Robin Williams.) Mostly good clean fun and Absolutely Free!
MODSpeak Live! debuted on the web in 1994. It was a free digital music library, featuring fLAtDiSk mod files and a collection of other artists updated with 30-40 new releases a month. Eventually the monthly updates grew to over 5500 files and fLAtDiSk Mod Archives was born on a separate server in 1999. MODSpeak also continues today with a more limited collection of .MODs, .MP3s, .WMAs, .S3Ms, .XMs, .ITs, and other free music files for you to download. Cool mod links there too. (If you exactly aren't sure what a mod is, think free music! MODSpeak Terms might help too.)
eXoNews is a library of real news stories you won't find on sponsor-controlled news networks or hear from your local lacquered news team. The after seven years online, the eXoNews site became an Archive of aliens, animals, archeology, astronomy, clones, crop circles, genre entertainment news and government misdeeds. While eXoNews was an active weekly publication, we prided ourselves on covering all the whacked and politically incorrect subjects the big news sites fear and eXoNews remains a great online resource for The News Outside The News!
TV_Vote (2001-2008) was an ongoing poll for television viewers aimed at finding the 5 Best TV Shows of All Time. Over 10,000,000 votes were cast by the time the poll ended in August 2008. Also billed as chance for fans to get even with Evil Network Executives for canceling their favorite TV shows, TV_Vote was the most popular continuing television poll on the web for over 5 years.
There is a lot more to the fLAtDiSk NeTWoRk than all this serious stuff, of course. We've got free music, cartoons, beautiful girls and handsome heroes. So loosen up! Drop by and have some fun!