Record labels have always appealed to me, especially ones with a catalog that is the vision of one person. Consider Jac Holzman, who founded Elektra Records, and those early, iconic logos (both of the label of such artists as Love and The Doors) and the musicians he initially hand-picked. Or 4AD, which had a roster that only label head Ivo Watts-Russell could have loved in its entirety. Same with Factory’s list of artists, as selected by Tony Wilson.
It is no surprise Jim Nash and Dannie Flesher were fans of many of the releases from 4AD and Factory, stocking many of those titles in their Chicago record store. The two men even started a label named after the store, and so Wax Trax! came to represent the area’s punkish electronic underground scene. Alas, they would go on to make two major mistakes also made by Factory: a catalog too large to keep the entirety of it in print and, more critically, not having contracts with their artists.
I believe both labels failed to do the latter for the same reason, and that is neither Wilson nor the Wax Trax! guys had any real interest in running a business. Instead, they just loved the music and wanted to make it available to the rest of the world. And that is a noble goal.
2018 documentary Industrial Accident: The Story of Wax Trax! Records begins at the end, after both of the label’s founders had died, years apart and each from AIDS. Nash had two children from an earlier marriage and we see them going through what was left of the label’s archives: bulging cardboard boxes piled high in an Arkansas barn belonging to Flesher’s family. It is a sad end to what was once such a lively and unique label and store. That those stacks of boxes appear ready to fall over if even looked at askance is an apt metaphor for the shambolic nature of their operations.
The documentary mostly details Nash, which is no surprise, as it was directed by Julia Nash, his daughter. His story starts with being happy married in Denver, only to return from work one day and abruptly announce to his wife he wasn’t in love with her anymore. He had fallen in love with Flesher and, together, they opened the first Wax Trax! store there.
It was a store reflecting the taste of two men who loved Bowie, Roxy and the New York Dolls. As one of the many talking heads here says, “The people who didn’t belong anywhere else all ended up at Wax Trax Records.” Jello Biafra fondly recalls the John Denver album at the entrance, hanging on the wall by the nails through the artist’s eyes.
1978 brought the move to Chicago and the store’s most famous incarnation. The store stood out even in such a large city. As described by producer Steve Albini: “What was great about it was it was this chaotic, overwhelming thing.” He also waxed fondly about the knowledgeable staff, as any record there had been made available because an employee wanted it: “You would get an education as well as a record.”
The store was quickly more than just retail, as it also became a venue for hosting concerts by a great many bands, several of which might not have been in the U.S. otherwise. One of the most prized of all rock collectibles are tickets for the Joy Division show that was to be held there before Ian Curtis killed himself the day before the band was to go to America. Still, the store hosted such bands as The Cramps, The Jam, The Birthday Party and Bauhaus. The owners were apparently generous hosts, as David J. of that last band puts it in that highly civil and gentlemanly way only the Brits can: “They were most personable.” But that didn’t stop him from abusing their generosity when given a store discount to apply to purchases, as he stole some pricey spoken work albums. Interesting how most other stores would probably be happy to give away any spoken work albums they might have.
Of course, this documentary only exists because Nash and Flesher expanded their operations to include a record label. The first disc released was a compilation of various artists of a wide variety of styles. The second, hilariously, was Divine’s single “Born to Be Cheap”. I love that title.
Al Jourgensen of Ministry somehow ended up playing guitar in Divine’s backing band for a spell, though I’m not sure if he played on that record. His first release as Ministry was the label’s third single. Jourgensen’s history ends up so entangled with the Wax Trax! label that this film curiously ends up being a mini-documentary on Ministry and the man’s many (many) other side projects as well. I found that odd, as his most famous band released only four singles on the label and no albums. But there were considerably more releases on the label once you take into account his work as part of Revolting Cocks, Pailhead, 1000 Homo DJs and Lard. There may be even more side-projects, as I lost track at one point.
The blu-ray set for this film has a second disc, another feature-length set of bonus interviews, edited to be like a companion film. But it is only an auxillary to the main documentary and does not stand on its own. After watching both films, they are blurring together in my mind, resulting in much of the information here being from one or the other with me unable to recall the source. That is similar to the blu-ray for punk doc D.O.A., where the movie proper and its feature-length bonus film combined are necessary to tell the complete story.
Those behind the Wax Trax! doc made the questionable decision to make it appear to be from VHS tape, pillarboxing the image to Academy ratio and applying all manner of effects to simulate glitches inherent to analog media. Cute, but I found it annoying.
In that bonus film, even a greater proportion of the stories are about Jourgenson and his various projects. We’re well past the period Ministry was releasing singles on Wax Trax!, yet still talking about Ministry even when they were now on Sire. There’s the $60,000 Fairlight synthesizer he mandated the label buy when he signed on (but it came with a bottle of champagne, gratis!). There was his refusal to sign fan copies of the band’s sole release on Arista, frequently breaking the discs in two and even defecating on a few copies. I could not help but wonder about the logistics of the latter. I’m imagining him squatting down over the platter in an alley, drawers dropped, sports section of the newspaper in hand, possibly wishing he had opted for the bran muffin at breakfast.
I’ve heard how difficult it could be to operate a Fairlight, so I wasn’t surprised to learn all anybody in Jourgenson’s circle to get out of it was to repeat the same bar ad nauseum. More than one interviewee chalks that up to why so much music issued by the label had so little variation over the runtime of a track. Chris Carter of Chris & Cosey (and, more notably, Throbbing Gristle) says the label didn’t really have a house style, but I’d argue strict repetition and minimalism seemed to be recurring trait. That and, frankly, a tendency to amateurism. As a member of Front 242 puts it, “We discovered that with equipment [like synthesizers] we could make music without really being musicians”.
Which is probably why I never found myself intrigued by Wax Trax! in the way I was by so many other labels. Yes, their catalog reflects a particular sound as much as Stax or Motown did, yet I simply never found most of the recordings I’ve heard that were issued on it to be very intriguing.
Still, I was quite pleased with Industrial Accident, perhaps mostly because I knew so little about the label before watching it. There are a great many fascinating anecdotes about this unusual entity that lasted a short time before they overreached and collapsed. In a way, I was reminded of another Chicago record store, albeit a fictional one, and that would be Championship Vinyl from the movie High Fidelity. Like that store, the employees and customers didn’t just like music in general, they were madly passionate about specific artists and records. Any old place can put records in bins. The best stores, and the best record labels, reflect the tastes of the minds behind them.
Dir: Julia Nash
Documentary
Watched on Wax Trax! blu-ray