Bio
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Rip Rense spent
five years
reporting and writing features for the Valley News (now Daily News of Los Angeles)
five years reporting and writing features for the L.A. Herald Examiner under the legendary
Jim Bellows, and
ten more as a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times. At the
Times, Rense covered music, and was part of a rotating group of
columnists in the "Life and Style" section. As a freelancer, Rense's feature articles and commentaries have appeared in the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, Denver Post, San Diego Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Atlanta Constitution & Journal, San Jose Mercury News, Seattle Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Milwaukee Journal, Eugene Register-Guard, and other major U.S. dailies---as well as magazines including TV Guide, People, Los Angeles, Emmy (the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences magazine), Silver Kris, Musician, Performing Songwriter, and ICE. He was Hollywood columnist for TV Guide (Canada), and for five years official biographer of the Academy of Television's annual Hall of Fame magazine. Prior to founding The Rip Post in 2002, Rense wrote an award-winning weekly on-line column, The Rense Retort. His Greater Los Angeles Press Club-award-winning Riposte is carried weekly on this site (currently on hiatus.) The column won five Greater Los Angeles Press Club awards: one for a tribute to the late historian, Iris Chang, a tribute to Jim Bellows, a tribute to the late journalist Catherine Seipp in 2007, the story of a woman losing her home to gentrification, "The Last Mexican of Venice," in 2015, and a commentary on the pandemic, "Gimme Shelter," in 2020. His 2003 column (not entered in the L.A. Press Club competition), "Big Trouble in Little Tokyo," was credited by LAObserved.com with stopping the city of Los Angeles from building a new jail immediately adjacent from Los Angeles Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple, the Southern California mother temple of the Jodo Shinshu sect. (Protesters demanding a stop to the jail were galvanized by Rense's column, and brandished it in hand at a meeting with city officials.) Rense also researched, wrote, and created an extensive website dedicated to the memory of the tragically forgotten, original Los Angeles Daily News, "the only Democratic newspaper west of the Rockies," which hired and promoted minorities when they were few and far between at the other L.A. papers, beginning with the Times. Rense has also originated and produced albums for the great American a cappella group, The Persuasions, including a tribute to Frank Zappa, Frankly A Cappella---The Persuasions Sing Zappa, and one to the Grateful Dead, Persuasions of the Dead (on Zoho.) In 2009, he and famed L.A. producer/bandleader Marc "Double Naught Spy Car" Doten produced the definitive live Persuasions album, The Persuasions Live at McCabe's Guitar Shop. Rense also coordinated The Persuasions' multi-award-winning children's album, On The Good Ship Lollipop. Rense has written extensively about music, including liner notes and essays for albums by Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, Grateful Dead, The Persuasions, Chuck E. Weiss, Jerry Lawson & Talk of the Town, as well as concert program notes for Tom Waits, and a concert of the music of Frank Zappa by the Florida Orchestra. Founding classical music reviewer for the Valley (now Daily) News, Rense reviewed Los Angeles Philharmonic concerts and performances by the visiting New York City Opera. His first professional sale as a writer, in fact, came at age 16 for an essay about Beethoven, "Brother Beethoven," in the L.A. Philharmonic magazine, Performing Arts (reprinted from the Venice High School Oarsman, where Rense was editor-in-chief.) He went on to write feature articles about classical music in the L.A. Herald Examiner, L.A. Times, Los Angeles Magazine, and in 2002 broke the news in the New York Times of the restoration of a lost Chopin prelude by Professor Jeffrey Kallberg of the University of Pennsylvania. He is widely known for having covered the Beatles extensively for a variety of publications over the decades, and is a longtime contributing editor to Beatlefan, the definitive Beatles publication in the U.S.. In 1982, while at the Herald Examiner, Rense wrote the first comprehensive look at unreleased Beatles music, a lavish nine-part series entitled "Off The Beatle Track," which generated international headlines and won the Valley Press Club Award for "Best Feature Series." In other music-related pursuits, he founded, promoted, and hosted "A Night at the Opera," weekly live performances with members of Los Angeles Opera at the late, much loved West Los Angeles restaurant, Gianfranco Ristorante All'Opera, owned and operated by his dear friend, the late Franco Altavilla. Rense is the author of four novels: The Last Byline ("One of the top 40 works of L.A.fiction"---California Writer), a serio-comic mystery about the decline of newspapers; The Oaks, the story of a boy growing up in a small town in the '60's with a terribly dysfunctional family; and two mysteries about a hapa (mixed Japanese, and in this case, Caucasian descent) detective in Los Angeles, The Death Sisters, and The Bronzeville Boogie. He has also written two collections of short stories, Strange Places of the Heart, and Cigars. His two non-fiction works, Less Than Satisfying Encounters With Humanity, and Less Than Satisfying Encounters II: The Profanity Edition (based on a column he originated in the L.A. Times) pithily and hilariously chronicle the absurdities of living in the 21st century. He has also written two lengthy collections of poems, Always Not There, and While Monsters (a third is in the works.) In 2024, he published "The Everything Tree," a children's fable concerning the adventures of a four-fingered hand in a fedora, and a walking moustache (illustrated by Keith Snider.) He is currently at work on a sequel to The Oaks, Summers of Love. Rense includes among his ancestors the Rippeys and Shearers of Ireland and England, who helped settle Pennsylvania, fight the Revolutionary War, and run the Underground Railroad, which smuggled slaves out of the South. His father, Art Rense, was a sportswriter and columnist for the original Los Angeles Daily News, and a poet. Rense enjoys Laurel & Hardy (he is a lifetime honorary member of the L&H appreciation society, The Sons of the Desert), W.C. Fields, Puccini, and Obon dancing. He is a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist, and is kind to animals.
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