Innovation is always born out of the weirdos…

Coming to theatres tomorrow, Nash The Slash Rises Again! Is a loving portrait of an artist emblematic of the spirit being a true outsider and one of the faces (enigmatic pun intended) of an artistic revolution that helped shape a city and the pop culture landscape all over the world

This film uncovers the sinister Canadian electronic music innovator who took his name from the killer butler in a 1927 Laurel and Hardy silent film. A classically trained violinist and multi-instrumentalist, he created music that was an unlikely combination of prog-rock, punk-rock, classic-rock, psychedelic with techno and industrial before they had names.

Nash The Slash’s (nee Jeff Plewman) lead an unearthly life drenched in film history enveloped in a wall of sound that would do Phil Spector justice, a career embodied in artistic integrity, courage and the price-tag that comes with it.

It’s the celebration of a mad musical scientist whose career decomposed before the world caught up.

Admittedly as a film critic and pop culture aficionado to a certain extent; I knew the name ‘Nash The Slash’ but I didn’t have a lot of context for it up it until now.

Here on his debut feature, co-writer/director/producer Tim Kowalski deftly drops into the life and times of an artist who was born out of the Grindhouse/Retrospective cinema scene in Toronto and was never afraid to live on the edge.

Something I loved here is that none of the subjects really spend a lot of time referring to this man whose birth name of Jeff Plewman rarely comes up and there’s really a reverence and fascination to the person that was Nash The Slash and what he was able to do.  Sure we get some context as the story lays itself out, but people are rarely talking about Jeff and always about Nash.  A persona built out the city scape of Toronto that was still finding its cultural identity, Nash The Slash found a space to be himself which is indicative of the punk ethos that was fast on the rise.

Thankfully Kowalski wasn’t afraid to show some of the more turbulent elements of the man and times as rampant drug use and chaotic behaviour certainly but limits on his success, but in seeing his evolution from musician, performance artist to film composer and beyond was refreshing at the very least.

There’s something so compelling about seeing an artist at work who basically doesn’t give a fuck about the trends and wants to take his art to the extremes in the face of social upheaval that is telling him to hide who he truly is from the world.

While the bandaged face would be less necessary now, it’s still a symbol to that importance of embracing that outsider artistic inspiration.  Nash The Slash Rises Again!  proves once again the old adage that the truly great artists only get appreciated after they are no longer with us.

For anyone with that creative spirit in the hearts, go see this film, buckle up and enjoy going down the rabbit hole into the times of a pop culture icon that came out of our own backyard.