Just before the last issue of the Baggage came out, we heard about the death of Jim Nash, co-founder of Wax Trax! Records.
His death from HIV was sadly poignant, his label having been consistent supporters of organisations like the Terence Higgins Trust, for whom they recorded several benefit records, since they really took off as a force in the music industry. What follows is an attempt to retrieve some small record of his achievement, and the achievement of his friends and colleagues at Wax Trax!, unfortunately obscured as it has been by the inconsistent and all too often non-existent coverage of Wax Trax! music by our hallowed British press.
Wax Trax! was started in 1973, by Jim Nash and Danny Flesher. It relied for financial backing on the revenue collected by Jim and Danny's record shop in Denver, which in turn relied on their personal record collections, together with a mish-mash of ten-penny record club memberships. Wax Trax! released first a single by Strike Under, and then a single by the obese cross-dressing showbiz personality Divine. Like other artistes since who have ventured under that name, Divine courted controversy, and soon ended up in court in a dispute over royalty payments with the producers of his single. The charges were quoshed: Jim and Danny, in a bizarre revelation, realised the seductive powers of the music industry from this small incident, and signed Divine. In this large and unusually dressed way, a label dedicated to bringing out the most innovative and experimental sounds on the American rock underground was born.
Then came a decisive moment in the history of Wax Trax! Jim and Danny met a scrawny youth by the name of Al Jourgensen. Sound familiar? Shortly afterwards came the release of 'Cold Life,' by a then unknown band, Ministry... the label relocated to Chicago, just as Ministry got their first taste of success, signing to Arista in 1982. Wax Trax! however, went from strength to strength: Jim and Danny decided the label had to go full time, and in a fit of nepotism, hired Danny's niece as their first full-time employee. Soon, the pioneering pair got wind of a new experimental electric music band, Front 242, and Wax Trax! 004, the band's single 'Endless Riddance,' was sneaked into music shops under the ears of an unsuspecting and uncomprehending public. In 1988, Front 242 would release what remains today the label's biggest selling release, 'Front by Front.' In 1984, however, they supported the newly returned Ministry, who had just put out 'Every Day Is Halloween,' on a US tour. At one concert, Jim Nash found himself talking to Seymour Stein, head of Sire records. Jim naturally inquired as to big Seymour's opinion on Front 242. "I don't hear any songs, there," Stein replied. Sire were later involved in a major bidding war with Epic and Sony for the band's contract, though what if not songs they were after is anyone's guess.
Meanwhile, Wax Trax! became a veritable hub of musical activity. Industrial music, that hybrid of disco, house, early eighties electric music (e.g. Kraftwerk) and guitar noise, was beginning to take shape, and that fiend Al Jourgensen was in the thick of it, forming the Revolving Cocks with Richard 23 of Front 242. The band released their first album, Big SexyLand, with photos taken from the Danny Flesher family album to give them a new and original slant on the old group photo album cover gag. Other pies penetrated by the many and musical fingers of crack-smokin' Al include Pailhead (with Fugazi's Ian McKaye) and 1000 Homo Djs. The latter sprung from an incident involving the illicit playing of Ministry outtakes on radio. Al was assured that the only people who would get to hear the tracks were 1000 homo djs, and so, during the recording of Ministry's nastiest and most -likely- to murder -someone-album so far, 'The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste,' Al got in bit of a state and recorded an old sixties classic, 'Supernaut,' with the vocal assistance of one now slightly well known Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. Al was not the only brilliantly creative artist on Wax Trax! at this time, however, and bands as well-respected on the industrial scene as Throbbing Gristle (reputedly the first industrial band) Psychic TV, Cabaret Voltaire, and Foetus rcorded for the label at various points.
In 1985, Wax Trax! were in the papers again. This time, they made more serious enemies. A band called Coil released a cover of Soft Cell's 'Tainted Love' as a benefit record for the Terence Higgins trust, and an accompanying video, including images of a dying man clutching a mask and being tormented by another, leather-clad man, provoked a hostile reaction among HIV campaigners. Strangely, though, the Museum of Modern Art in New York hailed the video as a masterpiece, and to this day holds it in their permanent film collection.
Swiss sampling machine pioneers the Young Gods signed and released their first single Envoyé in 1985. Laibach released 'Opus Dei,' an album of bizarre electric avant garde covers of pop classics, including Queen's 'One Vision' sung in German, in 1987, and other bands to sign round about this time include chessy techno gangster posse My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, industrial hip-hop geniuses Meat Beat Manifesto, and dance innovators and art terrorists the KLF, whose releases on Wax Trax! include 'What Time Is Love' and their strikingly original ambient sampling album 'Chill Out.' But the lynchpin of Wax Trax!'s most recent years, before and after their brief financial collapse in 1992, has been the German exile band, KMFDM. There have been many debates as to the meaning of the band's name, the most popular postulate having been 'Kill MotherFucking Depeche Mode,' which, although incorrect, was encouraged by the band. In fact, it stands for 'Keine Mitlied für die Mehrheit,' 'no pity for the majority.' Originally a performance art group whose first act was to put sixteen vacuum cleaners through a variety of distortion and effects pedals onstage, KMFDM went on to release a succession of wildly varying albums of electric pop, sometimes completely sample-led, sometimes powerfully guitar-heavy. More than any other band, KMFDM are emblematic of Wax Trax!'s identity: they espouse radical, some say naïve anarchist/socialist politics; they are cheerfully and defiantly hedonistic; they have totally open minds about what can be put into a pop/rock record; and whatever happens, their achievement will be enjoyed and remembered long, long after the Blurs and the Offsprings of this world have ceased to peddle their second-rate, second-hand, boring, insular twaddle. Jim Nash's memory, also, goes with them: for fuck's sake, go and listen to it, in any Wax Trax! release. There's a true wealth to choose from.