Sundog Rising!
Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog
Alash, Poor Nash
The local concert I most regret missing happened sometime around 1979 — I’m not certain of the date. Nash the Slash played the Festival Cinema, a hole in the wall indie-theatre now a pizza joint on the corner of Sargent and Arlington. A one man show, complete with a live performance of his self-composed soundtrack accompanying a showing of Luis Bunuel’s and Salvador Dali’s Un Chien Andalou on the Festival screen. From all reports it was an evening of legend. I always lived in hope that he’d come back and redo that sort of thing someday when I could catch him.
Except … while checking information for an earlier blog, I found out poor Nash died just over a year ago, May 10th, 2014, at the age of 66. The circumstances were mysterious — as they should be, given it’s Nash — but rumour has it a heart attack got him.
His look was the first thing that made him appealing of course. The tuxedo, top hat, sunglasses and bandages. When I finally did get to see him live at the Winnipeg Art Gallery on his Children of the Night tour, he wore his traffic cop uniform instead of the tuxedo, which I was always a little disappointed by. The bandages and glasses were still there, however.
It was a great concert. Nash was hailed as an early one man band technical genius, performing mostly on electric violin and mandolin, surrounded by a host of drum machines and other programmable technological instruments he liked to refer to as “devices” in his liner notes. But he was a down-to-earth genius. My favourite memory from the concert is the image of Nash bashing one of his devices repeatedly with his fist to get it to play right.
Nash was a founding member of the prog-rock group FM, which paradoxically never made it big until after his solo career took off. He played with the group again in the 80s and 90s, while still performing his one-man shows as well. He was one of the first independent artists in Canada to start his own record label, Cut Throat Records. His music was … well, very Nash.
He did a lot of covers, maintained a certain horror image, threw in social and civic commentary in a variety of his own compositions, did straight instrumental electronic music, and had a pronounced classical streak. Decomposing was a 1981 vinyl EP featuring three instrumentals that could be played at any speed.
I think a pretty representative 10 song Nash the Slash mix would consist of “The Chase” from 1979’s Dreams and Nightmares; “Wolf” and “Dead Man’s Curve” from 1981’s Children of the Night; “Pretty Folks” and “Vincent’s Crows” from 1982’s And You Thought You Were Normal; “Psychotic Reaction” and “Who Do You Love” from 1984’s American Bandages; “Guns and Sandwiches” from 1999’s Thrash; and “Baby O’Reilly” and “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” from 2008’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Nash.
No one would claim Nash the Slash had a golden voice, but he had a way of biting out lyrics that stood out. My brother, one of the ultimate Stones fans, couldn’t help commenting after hearing Nash’s take on “19th Nervous Breakdown” how Nash gave the cover a presence all his own simply by emphasizing the lyrics so clearly. Doing things like working in phrases from Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf in instrumentals like “Wolf” and making them sound like completely integrated rock riffs was also a trademark. As one critic wrote back in the seventies, Nash might be electronic, Nash might be classical, but he never loses sight of that rock Slash. No electric guitars in his act, but always the same impact.
Where’d the name come from? From a murderous butler in a Laurel and Hardy silent movie! How can you go wrong?
Yes, it would have been good to see Nash do the soundtrack live to Un Chien Andalou. There were rumours that he wandered out into the night and performed the piece again outdoors at the Winnipeg Folk Festival back around 2010, but I’ve never met anyone who can confirm that.
As my son Dylan grew up and developed his own musical heroes, there was one double bill we both would have paid good money to see. Nash the Slash and Buckethead. It was only a dream, alas, never to be realized now. But what a show that would have been!
*****
REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!
Part Two of Episode Twelve, Kafka-Ish hit the Net Monday, May 25th, and the results are announced on Friday, May 29th. Reality Fiction Three: The Interrupted Edition continues at:
http://realficone.blogspot.ca/
Debating the philosophical pros and cons of the insect life, with a sword fight (sort of) tossed in for good measure.
Episodes to Date:
Episode One: Dante-Ish — Mak’s Inferno
Episode Two: Chaucer-Ish — The Hermit’s Tale
Episode Three: Malory-Ish — Le Morte de Mak
Episode Four: Doyle-Ish — Mak the Kipper
Episode Five: Carroll-Ish — Madelyn in Wonderland
Episode Six: Stoker-Ish — The Down For The Count Shimmy
Episode Seven: Tolstoy-Ish — Anna Makerena
Episode Eight: Lem-Ish — So there is …
Episode Nine: Hoffman-Ish — Dr. Hoffman’s Happy Gene Machine
Episode Ten: Shakespeare-Ish — Hamlet the Barbarian
Episode Eleven: Poe-Ish — The Usher Motel
Episode Twelve: Kafka-Ish — Metamorphos-Ish
All with illustrations by the author. The complete roster of 34 Contestants have now appeared, so we move on to the supporting cast, the Judges, and the Guest Judges.
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