1975 - 1979

First live performance by the artist known as Nash The Slash.

Roxy Theatre, Toronto. Live soundtrack to the silent film Un Chien Andalou. It is a 15 minute performance opening at midnight to the Rolling Stone's movie Gimme Shelter.

The sold-out stoned-as-usual crowd love it.

The name Nash The Slash comes from the first Laurel and Hardy movie ever made, called Do Detectives Think? (1926). The comedy duo play two bumbling detectives looking for a maniac butler named Nash The Slash.

How fitting.

Welcome to my humble abode.

Nash forms prog-rock/electronic/pop group FM with Cameron Hawkins on keyboards, bass and vocals and Martin Deller on drums.

FM records Black Noise. The album does not get released until 1979. The album was recorded for the CBC, the only "rock" act ever to get this honour. It cost $10,000 to produce. The album was shopped around to every record company in Canada, and all turned it down.

Black Noise was then shopped in the US, and Passport Records in New Jersey picked it up.

Passport was distributed in Canada by a small label called GRT, and they subsequently ended up with a Gold album (50,000 sales) on their hands. GRT went broke, and the distribution rights went to Capitol, who also profited from the album. FM to this point, had received nothing.

Not until 1995, when FM re-issued the album on CD, did the band make any money from the sale of this recording. To this day it sells very well on CD as one of Canada's premiere Prog-Rock recordings.

Nash leaves FM and forms Cut-Throat Records. Cut-Throat's first release is Bedside Companion, a 4-song 12" EP of instrumental electronic music. It reaches 4,000 sales in six months thanks to CFNY Radio and Records on Wheels. Dave Marsden, Don and Vito. What a team.

Nash does numerous solo shows at The Edge in Toronto. Each show is based on a theme.

Nash does The Neighborhood Alert Show at The Edge based on the near-disaster at the Three-Mile Island Nuclear Plant. For that glow-in-the-dark look, Nash uses phosphorescent make-up on a roll of gauze. This is the first time Nash dons the bandages. They never come off. Nash continues in bandages as The White Top Hat, Santa Nash, Nash the Slash meets the Easter Bunny, Gangster Nash on the grassy knoll, and Nash the Cop. Other outfits would develop such as The Arab, The Black Top Hat, American Bandages, and Splatter Nash. But those are yet to come.

Cut-Throat releases Dreams and Nightmares, a full LP of instrumental horror stories. It sells 12,000 copies in 10 months. Not bad at $4 a copy wholesale.

Nash opens for Devo at the El Mocambo, Toronto.

Nash opens for Elvis Costello at the El Mocambo.

Nash and his lightman Stephen Pollard are hired to do the sound and lighting cues for a play called The Neon Woman. The star is the one-and-only Divine, star of John Waters's films.

There are three days of rehearsal to get the cues happening. The actors all knew their lines from previous performances in other cities. As this was low-budget, the show did not travel with a production team. The show ran for one week to less-than full houses, but it was great fun.

For a man who is close to 300 pounds, Divine is incredibly agile and sexy. To see him move about the stage in his six-inch stilletto heels is something to behold. Divine is not a transvestite. Off-stage he doesn't look or act like his stage persona. He is quiet-spoken and very personable. His character Divine is a wonderful outlet for him to be more outrageous than anyone before or since. From now on, any act of depravity put on film will be compared to the unforgettable Divine.

He is a comic actor who dresses as a woman in his movies. He also acts as a man in some films. In Female Trouble he even rapes his female alter-ego. Divine once said "When people tell me to eat shit or go fuck myself, I tell 'em I've already done that."

Nash has another unique experience with a member of the John Waters crowd. Miss Edie the Egg Lady (Edith Massey) is on tour as the Queen of Punk. She is doing shows in various punk clubs with local bands backing her up. The promoter has asked Nash to chaperone Miss Edie.

Miss Edie is 62 years old. She owns a junk shop in Baltimore, which is also a refuge for many stray cats and dogs. She doesn't like being away from her brood, so doing gigs away from home is a rarity.

The show takes place at The Horseshoe Tavern, a venerable Toronto watering hole. The backup band is The Viletones. During the afternoon rehearsal, the band plays power-chord riffs behind Miss Edie's ranting poetry. Her "songs" are about politics and social issues. She doesn't like to swear.

That evening's performance was one of the most memorable shows ever put on at The Horseshoe. Miss Edie (who is 5ft tall and 4ft wide) comes out on stage wearing her black leather bondage outfit from Female Trouble, a blonde beehive wig, garish makeup, a spider on her cheek, and waving a Star Wars lightsabre. She looks like a bowling ball with high heels.

The band plays wonderfully, and Miss Edie is hilarious. She spends more time introducing the songs and talking to the audience than she does "singing". That's because she only has six songs. The show is a great success, and the night is young. Nash must now show Miss Edie the town.

Nash's friend Bob has a mint 1949 Ford, and this is used for transportation. Miss Edie loves the car. Still wearing her stage outfit, Edie rides up and down Yonge Street telling Bob and Nash what her life is like. She doesn't really like all the weird stuff in the movies she makes, but she loves the people she works with, and it certainly changed her life.

Nash, Bob and Edie go to a few nightclubs, causing pandemonium, especially in the gay clubs. Edie is just like she is in the movies, only not as loud and vulgar. She is a wonderful human being.

Nash opens for Pere Ubu at The Horseshoe, Toronto

Nash opens for Ultravox at Hurrahs, N.Y.C. Nash's live performances begin to take on the macabre as he would finish his show by ripping his violin apart with an electric jig-saw.

Sacrificing violins has long been a Nash tradition. Spiritually, the violin has the stigma of the sacrificial, the magical and the infernal; Nero, Pagannini, and now Nash!

A number of violinists who have seen Nash gash or burn his violin consider it something akin to human sacrifice. Judging how the audience clamours for the pieces, this quality seems to be a matter of instinct.