Although she was more interested in “other music” growing up, she grew up looking at musicians like Jourgensen and Thrill Kill Kult’s Frank Nardiello like big brothers. The record store and the label offices were a second home for Julia when she was growing up. Photo courtesy of Wax Trax! Courtesy of Wax Trax Jim Nash and Dannie Flesher outside of their Denver location in 1975. “Gay people can like something else besides Cher?” Julia rejoins sarcastically. It was for a lot of people that had no experience with anybody who was gay. This was a pioneering label for a community that defied some of the stereotypes of what was happening. “It was much more of a cultural touch point. “I guess we didn’t realize that it was more than just a label with some great bands on it,” says Skillicorn, the film’s screenwriter, who is on the same call as Julia. “It’s been amazing seeing people recognize that this is a love story overall about two guys who, against many odds at the time, really made things happen and didn’t give a shit.” “There have been a ton of people at these screenings that really have had no idea what Wax Trax! was about,” she says. She started giving the film screenings last spring and recently heralded its soundtrack release with a series of events that paired a showing of the movie with a performance by Ministry, which played an “old-school set.” Although the Brooklyn event attracted a line around the block of people dressed ghoulishly in black, Julia has been happy to see the doc reach wider audiences too. “There are probably seven other 95-minute stories in there.” “Just to boil it down for a 95-minute narrative is crazy,” says Julia, who directed it. Other talking heads include KMFDM’s Sascha Konietzko, former Ministry member Paul Barker, Jello Biafra, Dave Grohl, Ian MacKaye and Chris Connelly. In the doc, Steve Albini talks about how the record store was important to Chicago Ministry’s Al Jourgensen describes the community surrounding the label and Trent Reznor explains how it proved to him that interesting music could come from the Midwest, where he’d grown up. Once they moved to Chicago in the late Seventies, they launched their label with releases by local artists like Strike Under and Ministry (as well as the drag queen Divine) and found their footing with industrial music. Industrial Accident: The Story of Wax Trax! Records traces the label’s history from Jim Nash and Dannie Flesher’s affair (ending Nash’s marriage to Julia’s mom) to the opening of the first Wax Trax! record store in Denver. Her daughter, who was a junior in high school at the time, filmed them excavating the storage space - and that footage kicked off what would become a documentary about her father and Flesher’s legacy. “I don’t even think I still have the words to describe how it felt looking at all of that,” she says. When they finally started sifting through the belongings, they uncovered the original Wax Trax! record store sign, contracts from the label’s later years and rare recordings by Coil, Ministry and Thrill Kill Kult. “I don’t think Dannie’s family understood the relevance and the history that was there,” Julia’s husband, Mark Skillicorn, adds. Because the state wouldn’t recognize Jim and Dannie as a legal couple, she had to jump through hoops so everything wouldn’t end up “in a burn pile,” she says. So she had gone to Arkansas with the hopes of recovering her father’s ashes, only to find herself embroiled in a legal battle for custody of his items. What Julia didn’t know is that her dad’s significant other had also held on to nearly everything Wax Trax!-related and stashed it away for safe keeping. Flesher eventually retired to Arkansas, where he, too, succumbed to a bout of pneumonia in 2010. When Jim died of AIDS in 1995, his partner tried to keep the label and the couple’s Chicago record store going. Flesher had cofounded the pioneering industrial label in 1980 with his life partner, Julia’s father Jim they were responsible for putting out important releases by Ministry, KMFDM, Front Line Assembly and My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, among others. Julia Nash felt as though she’d stepped into a Wax Trax! Records museum when she started looking through Dannie Flesher’s belongings.
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