By WILLIAM J. WRIGHT
If you’ve never heard of Nash the Slash, get ready for a crash course on the life and music of one of Canada’s most innovative, underappreciated, and downright scary artists, courtesy of documentarians Tim Kowalski and Kevan Byrne. On the heels of its premiere at the Blood in the Snow film festival in November of last year, NASH THE SLASH RISES AGAIN! makes its theatrical debut inToronto next week.
For the uninitiated, Nash the Slash (aka Jeff Plewman) was a classically trained multi-instrumentalist whose music was a sinister melange of prog, punk, psychedelia, and proto-industrial. Influenced by classic horror cinema, he took his stage moniker from the killer butler in the 1927 Laurel and Hardy short Do Detectives Think? Swathed in bandages, electric violin in hand, Nash the Slash blazed across the musical scene for four decades, garnering the admiration of such luminaries as Rolling Stone‘s Lester Bangs, Iggy Pop, Gary Numan and Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour (with whom he once famously declined a collaboration), among others.
From his murky origins to his untimely passing in 2014 to his enduring impact, NASH THE SLASH RISES AGAIN! recounts the musical mad scientist’s surreal journey and endless pursuit of integrity and originality through never-before-seen interviews, archival footage and dramatizations. Experience the enigmatic genius as never before on Friday, March 13, when the film screens at Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, with an exclusive Q&A with the filmmakers and Nash The Slash visual collaborator Stephen Pollard and a live musical performances, featuring songs from the newly recorded tribute album Nash the Slash: Covered. A screening at Calgary’s Globe Cinema will follow on March 19.
