Original subtitles

JULIA: It's all right.

Hi, George.

That's a big Barnabas dog.

[WINDOW WHIRRING]

We're scared to get out of the car.

Negatives.

Mark.

WOMAN: We had no idea what was there.

I mean, when we opened the door to that barn,

what was inside every single one of those LP boxes

and filing cabinets and garbage bags,

it didn't belong there.

It would've disappeared.

It would've never been seen.

The only place for it to be was back here in Chicago,

where it started.

Period.

[ROCK MUSIC PLAYING]

♪ Stainless steel providers

♪ Another tire Let it catch on fire

♪ A metal motor mantra

♪ Makes you waste The time of day

♪ You'll sit on a timebomb Forever and ever

♪ Now breathe breathe breathe Breathe!

♪ Breathe!

♪ Quick locate and detonate Your public enemy

♪ Stainless steel Believe it's real

♪ It's all you mean to me

♪ What's that sound What's that sound

♪ It bleeds efficiency

♪ The way I feel On stainless steel

♪ And all it means to me ♪

JELLO: I guess I first went to the original Wax Trax! store on Ogden Street

in Denver, maybe a week or two after it opened.

And this was the time

when mid '70s was supposed to be

all about adult rock, soft rock and Denver and Boulder,

where I was growing up were kind of the ground-zero testing grounds

for who was going to be the next Eagles.

So imagine my pleasant surprise

when I get to the Wax Trax! store

at that original location on Ogden.

And there on the front door is John Denver's greatest hits

with nails through his eyes

and blood painted coming down.

STEVE: The first Wax Trax! store was on Ogden street in Denver,

which was a rough part of Capitol Hill

down the street from the Bluebird Theater

and Sid King's show lounge,

which is a famous strip joint.

PATTY: When Jim and Dannie opened the first Wax Trax!

on Ogden street,

it's like they moved everything from their apartment into the store.

They'd been working as carpenters and cabinet makers.

They had this huge record collection

and their house was full of all these cool things, and everything.

I was like, "Okay, this is really great."

Yeah, Jim and Dannie were an amazing couple.

I mean, they fit together

like... glue.

What Jim had, Dannie didn't.

And what Dannie had, Jim didn't.

You definitely got the sense that they really loved each other.

But they had some amazing ways of showing it.

It was including like beating the shit out of each other.

STEVE KNUTSON: Being out, gay,

couple, at that time

in where they lived, in Kansas and Denver was a big deal.

And they didn't apologize for it.

They didn't hide from it. They didn't give a shit.

You know, they didn't care what anybody thought.

STEVE: When I met Jim and Dannie,

we were all really obsessed with David Bowie.

They'd seen him on the Ziggy Tour.

We were also as obsessed

with Roxy Music.

And we love the New York Dolls and T-Rex.

We liked all of this because it connected back to Rock and roll.

But it was sort of new.

I found this community of people

with David Bowie and Lou Reed and all that.

That's when really things changed.

They were selling Rockabilly.

They were selling girl groups, garage rock,

glam rock, psyche music,

space rock, old RnB and soul records.

Here is a place that sold in 1975,

and going into 1976,

everything that became the Punk cannon two years later.

JELLO: Spring of '77, the whisper goes around,

"The Ramones are coming to Denver, the Ramones are coming to Denver."

When the first record came out, I wrote a fan letter to them.

And their manager, Danny Fields, wrote me back immediately.

So they come to town,

and I, through Danny,

I picked them up at the airport.

And me and my friend, we borrowed his mom's car.

And first thing we did was go to Wax Trax!

And they loved it.

So, the Ramones were coming to Denver.

Yeah. We're all going.

This place called Ebbets Field, where you couldn't dance.

You had to sit down in rows,

all the way to this little stage, and stuff.

The Ramones came in,

just raving about Wax Trax!

saying it was the best record store they had ever seen.

And this is still the little Ogden location.

But they were that impressed with it.

Man, they blew the roof off the place.

STEVE: All of these things that they kind of provoked

and kind of made a subculture out of,

and just sort of attitude,

in that little scene that we had

became punk rock.

We felt very validated after punk rock happened.

It's like, "See? We were right."

Jim was kind of getting into all of these different areas

of putting out the kind of music that he likes.

He was a really passionate fan.

And he wanted everybody to see this

and love it as much as he did.

JELLO: Jim and Dannie brought out

a new-wave band from LA called The Nerves.

STEVE: The Nerves are famous for having written

Hanging on the Telephone that Blondie used later.

Anyway, they performed

and it was a complete drunken mess.

MAN: We opened, my band in front.

It was too loud,

and the cops just came upstairs.

It was like Andy Griffith

and Barney Fife showed up.

STEVE: Jim was so belligerent that he got arrested.

Jim was standing at the door,

he's got his arms behind his back,

he's been cuffed,

and he's yelling at Dannie,

who's yelling at the cops

because he wants to get arrested, too,

'cause he's not gonna leave Jim alone to be arrested.

At the same time Jim is yelling at him,

something about, he didn't turn off the coffee maker at home.

It was just that kind of madness, you know? All the time.

♪ It's good to hear your voice, you know it's been so long

♪ If I don't get your calls then everything goes wrong

♪ I want to tell you something you've known all along... ♪

PATTY: Parties were a big part of it.

Parties, dress-ups,

a lot of parties, a lot of dressing-ups,

a lot of kind of edgy dressing up.

It was just normal. It was just what you did.

You're young, you know?

You like music. You're into subculture.

You are the subculture.

You know, the music, the record store,

was all about misfits.

The whole scene, from David Bowie on,

was about misfits.

People that didn't belong anywhere else.

And they all ended up at Wax Trax! Records,

going to the shows and going to the parties.

And that really, I have to say,

was one of the most important things was that,

because of Wax Trax!,

there was actually a place to meet like-minded people.

Otherwise, we may never have found each other.

STEVE KNUTSON: One time,

I don't know, we were hanging out at the store late,

and they were like, "Let's go to the bar."

He told me this story about how he met Dannie

and, you know, how they got together pretty quickly.

And how he left his wife,

and he said, "Yeah, I told her I'm leaving you

"'cause you don't have a dick."

And I couldn't believe that he said that.

I was in high school, he was out of high school.

And we met and fell in love and got married

and had two great children, beautiful children.

We kind of just synced with the way we thought about things

and laughed about things.

Sarcasm was always a part of it, too,

but he was just really funny.

You know, we just connected.

In hindsight, there were things

that I could've picked up on that I didn't.

He came home from work

and just said, "I don't love you anymore.

"I want a divorce."

And I'm going,

"You loved me yesterday.

"You loved me last week, you know?

"What was it?"

And he said, "Well, I don't know, but I just...

We just need to not be this.

We talked again.

And we sat down and it all came out.

He started to cry. He...

'Cause I really thought maybe he was having an affair with this girl

that was hanging around all the time.

But he was having an affair. It just went a little differently.

PATTY: Jim and Dannie met in a cruising park.

And Jim was there

with his son, Aaron.

And Dannie came by.

Where we lived was very close to my mother's,

where I would take the kids every day.

And so I'd drop the kids off

and as I drive up the street,

I could see the front of our apartment

and Dannie's car was there.

He was truly in pain.

He was acknowledging something in himself

that he had a difficult time accepting

and didn't want it to change his life...

...because of the life he had.

'Cause we were happy. We had a happy life. He loved his kids.

You know, but the two of them fell in love

and you can't choose who you fall in love with.

And, you know, we remained friends

until the end, really.

DANNIE: Well, we started out in Denver, Colorado, in 1974 as a record store.

And then, like I said, everything sort of flew past Denver

and we were going to Kansas City,

or Chicago or New York to see shows.

And sold that to a couple of good friends of ours

and moved to Chicago in 1978.

STEVE: He was sick of Denver, and he wanted to move the store to Chicago.

And they wanted to come out and look around,

so they came and stayed with me.

And I remember, the third day that we were together,

they came back that night, said, "We found a place.

"We found an amazing place.

"It's over on Lincoln.

"And it's right next to the Biograph Theater."

They left all the furniture in Denver.

We just took the records.

We just took the records of Roxy Music table

and maybe some personal stuff.

They'd already built or had

all the bins made in the shop.

And it was painted.

So when we got up there, basically,

we just put the records in the bins and opened the store.

♪ Everybody plays a game

♪ We don't have to say the name

♪ If we take a summary

♪ Boys and girls Just ain't the same

♪ I don't have to say no more You know what... ♪

STEVE ALBINI: It was literally the first day that I came to Chicago.

Somebody at the dorm, I can't remember who,

saw me loading my records into the dorm room

and saw that they were a bunch of oddball records there...

...and said, "Oh, there's a record store in town you really should go to.

"It's called Wax Trax!."

I mean, we had heard, our friends here in Chicago, about a record store

that was in Denver

that was into sort of this new wave

of, you know, punk rock.

Certainly the Roxy Music, David Bowie,

Brian Eno, T.Rex...

When my roommate, John Sulek, and I

had heard that Wax Trax! was coming to Chicago,

we began camp out in front of that address

on Lincoln Avenue hoping to bump into them.

To me, your store stands for excitement.

FRANKIE: I knew this girl named Marty.

And she also lives in the same neighborhood I did,

which was Newtown.

I got to know them

and they knew I liked Glam Rock and, you know, Roxy Music and David Bowie.

And they were like, "Oh, you know,

"there's these guys that are gonna move here and open up a record store.

"That's really cool, you know.

"And they have all this kind of stuff that we like."

You know, "Oh, really?" "Bootleg." "Bowie." "Wow!"

STEVE ALBINI: What was great about it

was that it was like a chaotic sort of overwhelming thing.

But everything in it was all part of the same story.

And it's like, it was really weird

to see a place that was literally built for people like me.

And it was magical.

LARRY: You know, talk about falling down the rabbit hole,

just going into this alternate reality,

'cause record stores didn't look like that where I came from.

And they didn't sound like that.

They didn't have girls with two-toned hair

and people smoking behind the counter

and all this sort of thing.

And it was, you know, quite an eye-opener.

FRANKIE: Bright, big colors. Colorful.

You know, tons of promo everywhere.

They'd do displays

and put stuff up on the walls and...

You know, it was like jumping

into the center of a collage

with music playing.

It's like, "Oh, my God.

"I'm distracted, for some reason."

DAVE: Well, one year, we come up,

I think it was 1982 or 1983,

we took the L down to Wax Trax!

And it was the first time I'd ever been to a record store

that had... everything.

I was so blown away that this...

entire genre of music existed

without anybody really knowing.

Like, this was underground shit.

And there was this network of bands

and labels and fan scenes

that communicated with each other

off the radar of any sort of commercial scene.

Like nobody knew this was happening.

I had no idea this was happening.

I loved Rock music

and I was a shitty little vandal kid.

But I had never heard something that made me want to fucking break shit.

MAN: Very nice.

WOMAN: Wax Trax!

You walk into 1980,

our city was, you know,

it was in shambles.

The neighborhoods that we now all live in

were just derelict, crime-ridden...

So there were like these,

I would have to say almost like, misfits of, like,

you know, kind of punk rock,

kind of new wave, kind of gay, kind of disco.

You know, there was this really interesting sort of time

where people just really wanted something

to release the pressure of how hard it was.

And the scene begins to grow.

People were looking for something real.

And Chicago was a great place to be at that time.

When Jim and Dannie moved the store to Chicago,

what happened after that, is that Jim and Dannie started doing other shows,

bringing in ex-famously-Bauhaus show.

Jim and Dannie were in touch with our label

at the time, which was 4AD Records.

We were going to play in New York.

So, we thought, "Well, New York is not that far from Chicago.

"So perhaps we can set up a gig via Wax Trax!, you know?"

And that's what we did.

♪ Stigmata

♪ Martyr ♪

DAVID: And they were most personable.

And they took us to their apartment building.

We were made to feel very welcome.

In fact, for all of us, the impression

was that we had entered into some kind of

a very camp, very gay enclave

in the middle of this tough city.

Now we're entering Wax Trax!

We're seeing Gary here.

JULIA: It was almost like, "Yeah." We just...

This is where Dad lives now.

We went there.

And we hung out in a record store.

Like, it was not like, "What is this place. Interesting."

-No. -JULIA: We were just there.

AARON: That was your way of life. That's all you knew.

JULIA: Yeah.

JULIA: They had this penthouse apartment

on Surf in Broadway,

Queen Wilhelmina's ballroom.

Massive, massive living room.

We would roller skate in there,

dad had a wheelchair.

Like wheel around the place.

Dannie was

probably one of the kindest, gentlest

people I have ever met.

And it was quite a juxtaposition to my dad...

Yeah, yeah.

...who would, you know, he could like tear you on.

And he could like rip on people.

And just fuck with people.

We were driving in Chicago at one point,

and Dad said, "Dannie! Slow down, slow down, slow down!"

So this lady of the night is walking around, you know?

He's like, "When she starts to move over to the van, you guys,"

"open the door, right?"

So he calls this prostitute over to the van

and they come like, "Hey, big boy" kind of thing.

And so Dad's like, "Open the door, open the door."

So we opened the door, and there's these two little kids

in the van, and this woman was like...

I don't know what she did. We were laughing so hard.

But she backed off pretty quickly.

Yeah, that's Dad.

Dannie, Southern gentleman.

I mean, in someways, Jim and Dannie did seem like the old married couple

'cause they balanced each other really well.

Jim was the manic bouncing off the walls,

kind of prone to hysteria sometimes,

and Dannie was always very even-keeled.

Just kind of mellowed him out and balanced him.

FRANKIE: It's a team.

Dannie was Jim's backbone.

So, Jim could be Jim.

He was behind him.

He embellished Jim.

And that's why they were a team.

JULIA: I saw 'em kiss in the reflection of a mirror,

in their apartment.

And I was like...

It was one of those things like, "Holy shit."

And I wanted to look away,

but I was like, "This is crazy!

"These guys aren't friends. They're more than friends.

You know, I was completely blown-away,

confused, had no idea.

And that was that.

I kept it in, didn't say anything

and told my brother

on the way to school one day.

JOE: There were some bands that Jim and Dannie

just were really in love with

in Europe.

Things like, as I remember,

a lot of the 4AD.

The 4AD catalog was something that they really loved.

They loved the way it felt, the way it looked,

Factory was another one, of course.

SEAN: In the store,

it was usually New Order, Joy Division, A Certain Ratio,

Cabaret Voltaire, Portion Control.

Each person that I worked with

had their own taste,

and then had the taste of the store,

I guess, as it were.

Everybody shared Jim and Dannie's passion for the same music.

I mean, he had been a bit of a record label,

you know, sort of surreptitiously,

for grey market, black market records.

But just to throw yourself into it like that...

I got the impression that it was just a one-off thing.

We're just gonna do this...

I mean, we have a ton of customers who come in for this stuff,

and it's like, "Hey, let's put out a record..."

And then I think it was kind of fun.

That Strike Under, twelve-inch', which is just an astonishing record.

I mean, that's like a brilliant snapshot

of the Chicago Punk scene.

There was like a dance number on there,

which sort of like owned up to the fact that in Chicago,

punks would go to the dance clubs and dance, you know?

I didn't get the impression that that was true in LA

or like, you know, in other Punk scenes.

I didn't get the impression that dyed-in-the-wool Punk Rockers

were into going to night clubs to dance.

But you know, Wax Trax! was a fulcrum for that.

So I used my introduction to the whole sort of "How do you get a record?"

Because that was just out of...

That's not what people didn't do that. Companies did that.

But Jim and Dannie did this. They got this record made.

FRANKIE: The Divine single was sort of a novelty thing

that pulled people in more

to like, "How weird," you know?

Like, Divine, that crazy, bizarre drag queen,

who was already a legend with the films, and everything.

There was interest there.

STEVE ALBINI: Totally hilarious. Totally camp. You know?

How could you not be rooting for Divine?

Like, such a likable persona, you know?

And that was the only place in town that was like that.

That had that sort of camp, trashy sensibilities.

And my very special thanks to Jim and Dan of Wax Trax! Records.

JELLO: Jim or Dannie, or somebody, introduced me to a friend of theirs

they were starting to work with named Al Jourgenson.

And were just like, "Hi, Hi." "Like your stuff." Whatever.

Although I hadn't really heard his yet.

Jim and Dannie decided to put out this demo I did in my...

I was living right off Southport.

Just a demo on a four-track machine,

which later turned out to be Cold Lifeand I'm Falling.

And I played it for 'em in the store.

And he heard it and was like, "Whoa, we gotta do this."

He'd just released the Divine single.

And so, he put this record out.

I wasn't planning on putting it out, or even having a band.

As a matter of fact, I didn't even have a name for the band.

Jim always had someone

that he thought was the greatest thing in the world.

Now, it's Al.

♪ Cold

♪ Cold

♪ Cold

♪ Your body's In the hands of fools

♪ With swimming pools And low IQ's...♪

AL: I mean, it wasn't like this well-thought-out thing from Ministry,

but what happened was that,

that record and the subsequent, like...

Everyday is Halloween and Nature of Love,

started really taking off.

LARRY: I don't think it became real

until probably the Ministry record.

Because that started to get some club play

and started to get some attention.

It was catchy and it sold a shit load of records.

That was really nice. That helped the label a lot.

JOE: What Jim and Dannie did on Lincoln Avenue,

was create sort of this, um, meet-up.

One of the first sort of ideas

that a retail and/or a record store, was a meet-up.

You'd go and you'd see your friends

on a Saturday afternoon.

LARRY: Before I even worked there, Wax Trax!, it was a gathering place

for my friends, our little group.

It was just somewhat of a clubhouse.

You could go in there, you could drink, you could smoke,

you could listen to music.

But, also, you know, what else can you do?

What else do you want to do?

Cool social shit was going on

that they weren't necessarily getting any other way.

It was more than just a place to go and buy records.

It was a place to hang out and meet up

with, you know, like-minded individuals

and bands would form in record stores, you know.

It was like a social hub.

LARRY: You'd see regular people coming in.

You know, same people come in at a regular time

on Friday night, Saturday night.

It was just sort of a gathering place

for that sort of, you know,

the disenfranchised or misfit kids.

Whatever you want to call 'em.

STEVE ALBINI: The staff there were really knowledgeable

and really, you know, really forthcoming

if you showed an interest in something.

Somebody there knew the backstory

of every piece of vinyl in that record store.

Like somebody there decided to buy that record

and put it in the store for a reason.

And if you found that person, they would let you in on that reason.

♪ To hell with poverty

♪ The check will arrive We'll turn the boast again ♪

You would get an education as well as a record.

You learned about the interrelationship

of all the different members of the different groups.

Like how, "That guy came from this band and started this band."

Or, "This band came through here on tour,

"and they were really terrific,

"but this guy is in another band, and they sucked.

"Don't bother with that one."

You hear all this stuff that was really great,

and, you know, really fleshed out your appreciation

of all the records that you're buying, you know.

JOE: There was talk about, like,

there were a lot of records that weren't available in America.

And why couldn't there be

a distribution or a platform

for some of the European labels?

And that it would be produced here in Chicago.

The endless Riddance 12-inch was imported by a label

or a shop in the streets called Wax Trax!

But we didn't know that, of course.

I didn't even know that 12 inches weren't imported in America.

Until we received one day a fax

from the label saying, "Hey, we love your 12-inch Endless Riddance. Take One."

"We'd like to license it for the States. "I was like, "What?"

LARRY: The Front 242 record was taking it to a whole other level.

Ministry was a local act Jim and Dannie supported now.

But to go internationally, and reach out once again,

reach out to this band they got the Front 242 single into the store.

Jim and Dannie loved it.

PATRICK: At the time, we were kind of in sort of a post-punk area.

So those bands were trying something else.

Like getting out of the punk but with the same philosophy, in a way.

Like small equipment.

Not trying to have like big contracts with labels.

Trying to do stuff on their own.

Buying recording machine,

trying to produce stuff on their own.

And the history of Front 242

is very much linked with technology.

We realized that if we were buying synthesizers,

drum boxes, and stuff like that,

we could create something without being really musicians.

And that's how we started.

In the studio, I tell you,

we worked a lot with exchange of cassettes.

We have to take home, we try sound, have fun with this sound,

and then it's more like a collage.

It's never like...

We're not musicians. So, we don't really know what we do.

RICHARD: We were, I guess, back then, really influenced

by people like Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire.

They also had a concert, I think, that was not only about the music,

but a way to behave versus the industry.

You know, to be on your own, to produce and create the music by yourself.

To have your own label, your own industrial label,

it was proving to me that not being a musician,

not being part of a scene or the industry,

you could make something very strong and efficient.

So, the first idea of image of the band was to have something physical.

Maybe aggressive, as well,

like, you know, to try to break the rules

and break the way electronic music was back then

presented on stage.

PATRICK: I think it was also a challenge

to try to avoid that sort of cold, away feeling

about electronic music that people would say,

"It's just like stiff guys behind computers."

And we believe that there was maybe an era

where we could go that no one was not really...

There were maybe DAF that was kind of in this era,

it was a bit more like muscles and sweat.

And I guess that's when we started

to use the term while we're doing electronic music,

but it's also talking to the body.

And naturally it became electronic body music.

JIM: There is a lot of people out there

that will respond to this music

but there's no exposure for it.

A major label is not interested in a record

unless it's going to sell at least 50,000 copies.

They wouldn't even consider signing them.

That sort of thing. But...

You know, we feel that there is a big market out there

for that type of stuff.

LARRY: Thing about Jim and Dannie, Jim, in particular was

his obsession with turning people onto music.

He used to love these records and thought, you know,

that more people should be hearing these.

I mean, they like music and they wanted to have a shop

where people could find records that you could not find in another place.

That's the start of it.

And then, they realized that sometimes,

you know, there was music that had no chance to be on a record,

so, "Why don't we produce it ourselves and create a label?"

I think that's the way it came.

Because maybe they were a bit frustrated

not to find what they really liked on a record.

"So, let's do it ourselves."

♪ Love

♪ Love

♪ Love

♪ Love

♪ Love

♪ Hey ♪

RICHARD: I think around '84, '85,

when we started to tour with Ministry at a support band.

I knew Ministry.

I had the 12-inch gold live.

So when they told us that we'd go touring the stage,

and open for Ministry,

I was like, "Wow." I had a connection.

I knew the band. But only this track.

There was a very cool interaction,

even if the music back then of Ministry was completely different,

but there was a connection.

And the fact that Jim and Dannie were there, too, all the time, you know.

AL: The initial contact with Front 242

is because Wax Trax! record label

is also a record store to retail outlet.

And what happens is that a lot of these bands

from Europe that we're big fans of...

The distributors in America,

it's very difficult sometimes for the American distributors

to get independent product

from Belgium, from Amsterdam, and things.

So, we said, "Why not just go direct and get them from the band

"license them over here and do that?"

That's how the whole concept of Wax Trax! started.

And that's how we got together with Front 242.

It's just because we're fans.

RICHARD: Right after the tour, he called me.

He said, listen, you know, I got this deal with Sire.

And before I start working on my album for Sire,

why don't you come over and we try to do something

and do something for Wax Trax!?

And that's how it started.

LUC VAN: And Richard just came back from an American Tour

and was overexcited

and said, "I'm going back, you know.

"I'm gonna do a studio project with Al.

"And it's gonna be one or two songs.

"Do you want to join me

"and come with me to Chicago?"

I said, "Sure. Why not?"

Next thing I knew, I was on a plane

with Richard to Chicago.

And I met Jim and Dannie, of course.

They picked us up at the airport with Al.

And the first thing I ever saw of Al

was Al at the airport showing his ass to us,

like even before I went over that red line.

I saw Al's ass, you know,

and only a few hours later, I saw his dick, you know.

So, it's like, "Nice meeting you, Al Jourgenson.

Yeah.

This week, Australia's biggest ever computer exhibition

was held in Sydney.

For three days, the display center at Cedar Point

was filled with silicon chips and floppy disks

and liquid crystal display units.

Now, for my money, the star of the show was this,

the Fairlight Computer Musical Instrument. It's...

RICHARD: He called me, I don't remember exactly when,

but we played September, October and I was in January in Chicago.

So, in between, he called me and said,

"Listen, you know, I got this deal with Sire.

"You know, I got a big amount of money.

"I'm gonna buy a Fairlight."

AL: This Fairlight, when it originally came out,

the record label bought it for me.

And it was like $60,000 in 1982 money.

RICHARD: Fairlight, then was a very expensive machine.

It was a machine that would give you the possibility

to make samples, digital samples, and put them in a sequencer.

Peter Gabriel was using that kind of machine.

Peter Gabriel was like a world star

and he had the money to afford a Fairlight.

We went to the music store and we opened the box.

And it's such an expensive piece of gear, you know.

There's a bottle of champagne in the box when you open it.

And plastic champagne glasses.

So, we're in the shop, you know,

and we're drinking warm champagne

because it was in the box, and we...

I'll never forget, you know. I was like, "Whoa."

To me that was the Walhalla of sampling.

We thought the stuff sounded pretty cool.

We didn't know what we were doing on the Fairlight,

and it's just real repetitive and drony

because nobody knew how to edit beats and all that on it yet.

We were really naive.

But, we thought, "Wow, we're onto something.

"This kind of sounds cool."

The problem we had is that we could use the Fairlight.

Turn it on, make a page of sequence,

but we could not make a second page,

so we had like 16 or 24 bars of music that was turning.

But we could not figure out how to do a second one

to stick them together.

Because that was only eight bars, or something, of music.

We always came up with this hypnotic...

grooves, you know.

And that's how the Revolting Cocks' sound developed.

But the flavor of the music of Revolting Cocks

was something very repetitive.

Because that's all we could do.

LARRY: Big Sexy Land was the first full-length record

by a Wax Trax! band.

It wasn't a licensed act. it was a homegrown act.

The Revolting Cocks covers with the original three guys.

Those are Dannie's relatives

taken on a bridge in the '40s or '50s in Arkansas.

Those were the three guys. Me, Richard and Luc.

We're instead just Dannie's relatives.

Because we didn't want it to be like a fashion contest.

We were just like, "Put up those old crazy miner guys."

BILL LEEB: To me, that was one of the first times

where a true collaboration

of a bunch of guys from different big bands getting together

like an industrial super group.

Everybody came from a different band that was incredibly successful.

And I think that's spurned

a lot of other bands to do that, you know.

What do you think of the impact

of Wax Trax!, you know?

Well, basically, you know, being a regional store

for so many years, we're able to, in Chicago,

influence musical tastes

by what we feel is good music.

Just like the radio plays crap,

we do the opposite.

[ROCK SONG PLAYING]

MAN: You have reached Wax Trax! records label.

MAN 1: Hi, this is the Record Gallery in Dallas, Texas.

WOMAN: This is Constance Jackson.

I'd like to know if we could get Front 242, The Revolting Cocks...

MAN: I have to talk to you tonight. It's Monday night.

We have to do a reader ad for tomorrow.

ANDY: I mean, at the same time

that Jim was rapidly signing new bands like KMFDM and Pig,

and Front 242 was hitting their peak,

that was when Al and Paul

unleashed the Luxa/Pan explosion on us.

PAUL: My brother was in the band, Blackouts, with Erich Werner and Bill Rieflin.

I started playing with the band.

I don't know, eventually we met Al, or he came to one of our shows,

He asked me if The Blackouts wanted to join him

and tour as Ministry.

AL: I had no band, they had no singer,

so, it was like, "Okay.

"Join forces."

PAUL: He really liked what we were doing.

And I think he wanted his sound

to be harder than it was.

Maybe a year later,

Al asked me to go to England

to work on some new material.

Al and I stayed there straight for six months

and we worked with Southern Studios.

We were in there whenever it wasn't booked.

The Jesus and Mary Chain did their first record at Southern.

And so, they were wrapping up when we got there.

And I really think that that first Jesus and Mary Chain record

really sprouted that whole

whatever the fuck scene is.

It's like, "Just be as obnoxiously as loud as you fucking possibly can be.

"And just fuck you." It's so badass.

We also went to see Big Black

somewhere in London at that time

and were really thrilled about how aggressive it was.

We would go back to the studio and go, "All right, what do we got?

"Let's listen to what we got."

You know, like, "this isn't cutting it." You know what I mean?

Look, we gotta fucking run this thing

through a bunch of mic pre's so that it's just like...

You know, like, we gotta toughen it up more and more.

AL: So I just got so pissed off with keyboards

that I just went back to doing guitar, which is what I grew up on.

That's Rape and Honey. That was on both fronts.

I found a way to like keyboards again

and I found my stroke back with the old guitar days.

So, there was a nice convergence there, too.

At the time, we weren't dividing our projects.

You know, at the time, we were just writing music

that ostensibly was gonna go to Ministry,

to a new Ministry record.

Sire was paying the bills,

so, you know, we could just go in there and just do it.

In 1987, I think January '87, I think it was,

I was in London at Southern Studios.

And we were in the kitchen making tea.

And the door opened and this guy comes in and said,

"This is Al from Ministry."

You know, I had heard of Ministry 'cause I had worked at a record store

and I knew them from Arista.

So, I was like, "Okay, like, that's weird."

Ministry? 'Cause I think it was really kind of

lightweight kind of dense electronic band thing.

You know, the thing about him

is that he was a very charismatic,

very charming, sweet guy

who had a pretty over-the-top facade, you know?

He was very... He came off like this lunatic.

So, he said, "I have this one song I want you to check out."

He gave me a cassette. I had found a spot to sit down.

I listened to the cassette, and I mean, it was a good fucking song.

And then towards the end, I thought, "Man, let's do this."

So, I just wrote lyrics, you know.

I wrote this song is called I Will Refuse.

♪ I will refuse♪

This song that was largely predicated

on the conversations that he and I were having

about his frustration of being in a major label.

You know? He was so frustrated.

He was just furious about it.

And I was saying, "I will refuse."

Like fucking, you know, I won't get involved.

So I was thinking it was gonna be just a track on this record.

And then, a couple of months later,

I get a call and Al was like, "We wanna do another song.

"We love this thing so much,

"we don't want to put it on the Revco record.

"We want to do something separate."

I go in there

and there's no set limitations.

Like, "Okay, this has to be a Ministry song.

"Or this has to be for radio.

"Or this has to be for that, or this has..."

We'll just record with whoever happens to be there at the time.

[punk rock music playing]

It developed into a successful

fantastic world, you know,

that they ruled.

And it wasn't anywhere else.

It was like the burning center of America.

It wasn't New York, it wasn't LA.

You know, it was like in the center of America,

where all the hillbillies and the losers and the dorks live,

accordingly to the East and the West.

♪ I hope no one can find me

♪ Set in his ways crying alone ♪

People knew that we're flying in from Europe, knew to do, just...

go by the studio, go by the store.

And then, you know, like,

art came out of it, just music came out.

We bought a DAT player so that we could actually

play the Wax Trax! releases that were being made that week.

We would, you know, have artists that would come and actually

test out a... Either a test pressing and/or a DAT

on a live dance crowd in Smartbar.

It really touched on me that

it felt like a community, you know?

It made me think, "I gotta get the fuck out of Cleveland,

because there's more like-minded people here in Chicago,

and I'd like to be a part of some scene."

That trip to Chicago collectively made me leave the city feeling like,

"All right, there's really something happening here."

ANDY: '87 was when things really were taking off.

I don't think any of us, including Jim and Dannie,

were aware of it at that moment.

And, really, that was the explosion of Wax Trax!

So it's true that between '86 and the late '80s, before the '90s,

there was... It was the beginning of the scene, like, it was concrete.

It was not one or two bands, it was more bands,

playing live, in America, "Wax Trax!" above it.

[SINGING in FRENCH]

BILL LEEB: All of it was good.

I can't think of any of that stuff that wasn't really good or viable

or edgy or didn't have a purpose.

I'd never heard anything like that before, you know?

Fetus or Laibach, I mean,

other artists, Greater Than One, Cosey Fanni Tutti.

You couldn't pin it down somehow, you just knew that...

Sort of, outrageous, I think, would be the word.

It was just like unapologetic, was their style.

It was like experimental music, white noise.

They were deep and dark elements.

They were not like anyone heard.

They were not commercial.

JOE: Pushing the envelope.

Pushing the political and comedic aspects of things, and sort of,

what could they get away with? You know?

There's no such thing as bad press, you know?

Just keep throwing gas on the fire.

I got a letter in the mail from Wax Trax!,

inviting KMFDM to open for the entire Ministry tour

starting in late '89, during its "The Mind is a Terrible Thing" tour.

EN ESCH: And it was the time when Wax Trax! was interested in all those European artists.

And so that was totally, coincidental, yeah? And obviously...

It was Al Jourgenson, basically,

who wanted to have a weird European band on his tour back in the days.

And so he made it possible that we come over there and tour with them.

We were realizing what a potential there is.

US as a country, a big market,

long tour, second tour, all that exciting,

totally nuts people everywhere and they were totally into it.

And they said, "Well, you know,

we actually really want... We want to sign KMFDM.

We're gonna give you like a three-album deal."

I said, "Why would you do that?

How many records of these two licensed ones have you sold?"

They were like, "I dunno, maybe 60, 70, 80,000."

I was like, "Holy cow."

♪ Black man, white man, Rip the system

♪ Black man, white man, Rip the system

[VOCALIZING]

EN ESCH: They turned into a band, just like over time...

KMFDM performances were more like

in the art circles, like,

soundscapes, and in galleries doing readings and exhibitions.

It was basically industrial noises,

it was vacuum cleaners and feedbacking bass guitar,

and hammers on steel.

We call them in Germany...

[SPEAKING GERMAN]

Genius amateurs. Cause that was very, like, kind of a move, you know,

certain people didn't want to make normal music anymore.

They wanted to be fucked up, and dissonant, and stupid.

It was about the attitude.

ANDY: Some of the early KMFDM records, there were a lot of samples,

but on later records, they would, Gunter from the band would

play, like, endless guitar solos and Sascha would sample them and chop it up.

That became the backbone to later KMFDM releases.

EN ESCH: He was a friend from mine from Hamburg, and we hired him to be, like,

a metal-style guitar player,

and double up our other samples we had from metal guitars.

Gunter's playing these crazy custom-made guitars, like,

like something you'd see from Gene Simmons, you know?

And he's like a guitar player's guitar player.

EN ESCH: So we got a little harder, we were kinda influenced by Ministry.

But also Gunter Schulz came into the picture.

It developed from maybe stealing someone's riffs,

and then it's a very short way

to the point where you start playing your own riffs all of a sudden.

JIM: Most independent labels, I find, that've been really successful,

or somewhat successful, have had a vision of a particular sound maybe, you know?

Pretty much what we wanna do now is work with

self-produced projects and the people we've met.

FRANKIE: I remember Jim had interest in what we were doing, naturally,

because he knew me, and, you know, Mars from Ministry, and all that shit.

And he was interested.

I think he was sort of like, "Well, what can you do?"

All right, this is goodnight from Thrill Kill Kult.

-I'm Jacky. He's... -Groovie.

-And you are? -Buzz.

I'm Buck.

-And we're... -The...

The Thrill Kill Kult.

We put together, like, three songs, on a cassette, and were like,

"All right, here's what we're working on."

They were like, "This is really weird, this is really different.

"We wanna put it out!"

He sorta said, you know, "Go, go with it."

And so we did

compose our first EP.

And I suppose some people saw us initially as a very serious band, you know?

They really took out those dark elements out of us,

the Satanic overtones and things.

They really thought of us as, like, ooh, ominous scary band, you know?

And I had people that were Satanic people that were like,

"We have your name on the altar, and we all, you know..."

♪ I was raised in Mississippi

♪ I was raised in Mississippi

♪ I was raised in Mississippi

♪ I was raised in Mississippi ♪

It wasn't about "Worship Satan, kill for Satan."

All the people that take things the wrong way,

that come out around some idea like this,

"Oh, you're anti-religious," or "You love Satan."

It was blasphemous. I did draw on holy cards that I'd xeroxed,

and made silly faces on them. It was a doodle.

I wasn't really trying to rebel. It was like I really didn't care.

ANDY: You knew about Wax Trax! from the outside, and you'd hear this

brutal, aggressive music, you don't think that there's humor to it.

But really, it's there in the music. It's in plain sight.

I mean, Revolting Cocks...

I... I just don't know how you cannot get the wink.

Even with so much Wax Trax! music, I think people missed the sense of humor,

much like they missed Jim and Dannie's sense of humor.

I mean, the music is seriously good. It's not novelty music.

But there's this wry sense of humor that runs through it.

MARSTON: Jim and Dannie loved Laibach, but they loved Laibach because

it was so, like, over the top, and ridiculous, almost,

even though I don't know whether they take themselves really seriously,

or not so much. I don't really think they do.

♪ Es gibt ein Leben

♪ Es gibt ein Leben

♪ Es gibt ein Leben

I'm not sure I get it.

I don't know what's going on with them.

I could be wrong, but I think it was a joke.

I'm pretty sure it was a joke and a lot of people missed it,

but maybe I missed it. I didn't take it seriously.

LUC VAN: Perfect Wax Trax! band, you know?

How provocative can you be, you know?

It takes intelligent people to understand that,

and I don't think...

that everybody's intelligent enough to get humor of Wax Trax!, you know?

It's like, very... it's very...

This is what it's all about.

Okay? Get it?

I mean, it's quite hard to pinpoint a sound of Wax Trax!

'Cause the bands were very different, and what they did, you know.

Some of it was quite rock 'n' roll, some of it was electronic,

some of it was "industrial," I guess-ish.

But that's what I liked about Wax Trax!, it didn't have a house style, did it?

Cause you put us next to Revolting Cocks, we don't sound anything alike, you know?

Yet we're on the same label.

And that's what I think was part of its strength,

was that it had this... such diversity of sound and artists.

I'd love to say that Wax Trax! records was doing Wax Trax! music, you know,

not necessarily industrial, or metal, or whatever.

There was a... dare spirit, you know?

You could have bands like Lead Into Gold,

or Front 242, which were quite different in a way.

But it all matched.

BILL LEEB: We were like a big family.

When we went out on tour, we had friends who'd help us out and do stuff.

I think that's what kept it going and made it fun.

The thing is, they created a space for all of us, you know?

All the Wax Trax! people, you know? Where we could do whatever we wanted.

♪ One you lock the target

♪ Two you bait the line

♪ Three you slow spread the net

♪ And four you catch the man ♪

LUC VAN: They would support you. They'd be like,

"Oh, that's really brilliant. Go and do that.

"Go to a studio, record that."

They would push you. You didn't have to ask, like,

"Can I do a new recording?" No, no, you were already in the studio,

you were recording.

CHRIS: You know, when you talked to Al, he was doing everything.

You know, you talk to Al, he'd say,

it was just like, "I'm gonna do this, and we're gonna do this,

we're gonna tour this, I'm gonna do that,"

and you know it was just like, okay, all right, we're gonna do it all.

And he did. I mean, in a sense, he was in the studio 24/7.

He called me up, and he was playing "Stigmata" down the phone to me.

And... what was it? I can't remember the turn of phrase...

"Man, this shit is hard as nails. Hard..."

Then he held the phone up to the speaker...

[IMITATES STATIC] ...down the phone.

And he just started going into this, "We're going to be enormous!

You should be the singer for Revolting Cocks!"

So it was at that point that I just, sort of, you know...

That's when Jim Nash stepped in, and sort of got me a ticket.

♪ Yeah

♪ Yeah

[UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING]

♪ Suck it and see, salute me

♪ Suck it and see, salute me

♪ Suck it and see, salute me ♪

JOE: Really, one of the classic, metro Wax Trax! moments,

is the RevCo show.

I mean, you goddamn son of a bitch.

MAN: The band comes on stage with the Revolting Pussies dancing in front,

who're immediately the spectacle, and taking off their tops.

LUC VAN: Al got a razor blade and cut his arm open to have real blood stuff on stage.

The Fairlight was covered in blood. And I remember, just like...

That's real blood!

CHRIS: That was really nuts. And that's when I realized that Al

thrived on chaos.

LUC VAN: Al always gets, like, the completely whacko side of things.

ANDY: And I really thought, this would answer those critics,

who say that Wax Trax! bands don't play live, they don't know how to play instruments.

I'm like, this is it. We're gonna show 'em.

And, we proved the exact opposite.

All that was re-recorded, you know, before the "live" album came out.

It was still a fantastic show, and the record sounds great,

but, yeah, not that live.

-MAN: Okay. -WOMAN: Okay. Indie label profile questions.

for mister...

-...that is a lot of work. -MAN: A lot of money.

You know, as far as I can, it's such...

The cash flow problems of doing an indie label are unbelievable.

And if I didn't have a store to go to rip off,

you know, run into the ground practically every month, you know what I mean?

SEAN: There were two different businesses and they were constantly

taking money out of one for the other and the other...

I didn't know what the hell was going on, half the time,

with the label and the store.

The Wax Trax! name, by then, had a cache to it,

and there were people who would buy anything with the Wax Trax! name on it.

And there seemed to be enough of them that...

that there were no risks.

With Jim's business acumen,

and the way they built Wax Trax! into such a strong brand,

with a certain sound, there was even a venue or two in San Francisco

that would hold "Wax Trax! parties."

First time I went on a business trip when I worked for the label,

was, I went to the Winter Music Conference in Florida.

And they wanted to have a Wax Trax! night at their club.

And it was filled to the brim with kids just losing their shit

to Wax Trax! record after Wax Trax! record.

DJs were playing only Wax Trax! records.

Wax Trax! always had a really good market in the Bible Belt.

We always knew that.

Retail was really good to Wax Trax! in the Bible Belt.

It almost seemed, the more conservative a small town you were in,

the more you needed a Revolting Cocks record.

There were kids who were stuck in small towns

that, you know, didn't have access to any of this.

There wasn't a record store that sold Wax Trax! or industrial music.

They didn't have connections with friends that, you know, had the same interests.

And so, by receiving those packages,

they didn't feel like they were on a desert island.

ANDY: There's an aspect to Wax Trax! music that's a little pretentious.

And so you would expect the guys behind it to be that, but...

But they weren't. Jim and Dannie were hillbillies. They were just

normal, normal guys.

There, you could go in on any Saturday, when they open,

you've got the owner of Wax Trax!

and the record label, vacuuming or something,

and talking to you about the new music and everything...

Again, I don't know about other places but they were approachable by everybody.

You know, I wanted to talk to people who ran record companies

because I wanted to make records.

Having them listen to your idea,

and coming up with solutions to make these ideas happen

was a big change for me.

The fact that those guys wanted to support artists who have no idea

what the fuck they were doing, was the charm of Wax Trax!

There's no separating that.

It's like... Yeah, let's talk about business people and what they would do.

Who gives a fuck? You know? Like,

that has zero, you know, to do with this business, you know.

It's... it's crazy.

LARRY: I think it was around 1990s, when

the business aspects of it started to really rear their ugly heads,

and it became apparent that the model was not sustainable.

Things were unraveling, and to keep at that level...

Like, wait.

You have this much money, you haven't sold a damn record yet.

Wait, how much is this gonna cost? We need that...

And I hate math, and I hate all that stuff.

I'm like, "We have to be sensible here."

They were not into figures. They didn't...

I'm not saying they didn't care, but they didn't realize.

They had the money coming in, they would spend it on products, or whatsoever.

Jim let the artists spend as much as they wanted in the studio.

He didn't care how much the artwork would cost, or you know...

It was really throwing it at the wall.

We didn't have a focus at that point in time.

We kinda put every release through the same machinery.

Jim had set up a lot of partnerships around the world.

We had a close relationship with Southern Records in England,

and we had a close relationship with Play It Again Sam in Brussels.

At a certain point in time, it seemed to make sense

for us to partner more officially.

And we became Play It Again Sam's home in the US.

MATT: There were a lot of records that that deal required Wax Trax! to put out.

Even if it came to already... even if you didn't have to pay for recording,

saying yes to a record was saying yes to spending $25,000.

PATRICK: To carry the whole catalog became...

made Wax Trax! have a heavier structure than they could carry.

And it kind of made the boat sink.

The stuff on Wax Trax!, the original stuff, before Play It Again Sam,

that was because Jim and Dannie saw a vision, you know?

There was something in those bands that was part of them.

That made Wax Trax!

When the stuff came shipped in, and they had to release it,

that wasn't Jim and Dannie, that wasn't Wax Trax!

It was just something they were obligated to do.

And I think that kinda translated, and I think fans caught on.

We already were dealing with DJs and radio stations

that were only willing to take a couple of records from us a month.

And suddenly, we're sending them, like, eight at a time.

We really just cannibalized the support we had.

We forced people to pick and choose.

And the writing was on the wall that that relationship couldn't sustain itself.

AL: In retrospect, sure, everything could've been done better.

You know, you try and do something out of just like...

Just strictly about the music and positive

and you're a fan and all that,

and it just bogs down, with everyone all of a sudden realizing, like,

"Wow! We're like in the music business."

And you're being whispered to by various managers, and this and that.

"This is how it's done! You don't do it like that.

You don't do it on positive energy and a contract on a napkin,

"or a handshake."

It becomes successful. And once you get successful,

everyone just like, it's torn apart.

I had heard that we didn't have any contracts with our artists.

And that was weird and different.

But we worked really hard for the artists,

so I didn't think that there was gonna be, that it was an issue.

Wax Trax! had a really great thing going on.

They had a very unique aesthetic. They had a very unique sound.

If people find out, as with Factory Records,

that there's no contracts or anything,

then, yeah, business is business.

People are gonna swoop in and just snap that stuff up.

Some independent labels that operated without contracts

had verbal agreements with their artists, that if the artists left,

the records they made before would stay with that label.

That agreement didn't exist, verbal or otherwise,

with Jim and Dannie, and the bands at Wax Trax!

Very clearly, what was about to happen was

not only were some of Wax Trax!'s biggest acts

gonna go begin to work with other labels,

but they wanted to take their records with them.

RICHARD: Leaving Wax Trax! was heartbreaking, honestly.

It's curious to say that because we decided to go.

But I think it was a period where we realized

that Wax Trax! had reached their

maximum in terms of distribution, promotion.

It was like the business of it. It wasn't the friendship of it.

We reached our point, you know? And unfortunately, at that time,

things were going through their transitions, too.

And as big as a lot of the Wax Trax! records seemed,

a lot of those guys and gals who were insanely talented,

they all still had other jobs.

You know? They weren't... This was... you know...

So if you have an opportunity, major label comes along and says,

"This can be your only job. You don't have to work in the warehouse anymore.

"You don't have to be a barback at shelter anymore."

Hell yeah, that's what you do.

You know, I mean, Jim and Dannie operated the label on trust,

and, you know...

Then, that trust was violated.

And not by the artists, but by the sharks that were circling the artists.

Not only is the cutting edge hard to find,

but once the mainstream settles on what the cutting edge is,

chances are it isn't the cutting edge anymore.

And even in a place that's supposed to be at the cutting edge,

music can be a tricky business.

Wax Trax!, which was one of Chicago's strongest independent labels,

made a few wrong moves, and has been in Chapter 11 since last year.

ANDY: Most of the big bands had left the label. We'd lost Front 242,

we'd lost Thrill Kill Kult, we'd lost all the Ministry side projects.

And it was gonna be a real uphill battle to rebuild the label.

And I think Jim and Dannie, they needed an easy out.

They needed relief, they needed an escape.

And all the other opportunities had gone away.

Nobody would touch the label

because Wax Trax! didn't have contracts with any of its artists.

Steve Gottlieb from TVT turned out to be

that company that was willing to do that for them.

As is often the case in those kinds of deals,

Jim and Dannie chose to put the company through bankruptcy

as a way to right the ship and get this deal done with TVT.

TRENT: Nine Inch Nails ended up being a terrible catalyst in a lot of ways.

At that time, just like, somebody big comes out of Seattle,

and they sound like this, okay, sign every band that's like that.

Nine Inch Nails started to break out. "What is it?"

"Oh, it's industrial music." "Okay, who else is that?"

You know, major labels start coming in.

TVT would've seen that as an opportunity of,

"Oh, lemme just scoop up all this other shit" and, you know...

Without any respect for what the artistry behind it, or what it means,

or what was good about it, or resonated with culture.

It was just an asset.

I mean, they started out with like...

Licensing and whatever, like...

TV series, melodies, something like that.

That's why they're called TVT tunes, or whatever, TV Tunes.

There was all of a sudden, there were bands like Utah Saints, stuff like that,

but also like, early stages of people like Korn and, you know, people like that.

The whole thing got bigger and bigger.

JOE: I think that the scene itself had grown, and it was tough.

And then...

You know, Jim got sick.

LIZ: You know, he didn't care about the store, the label, nothing anymore.

Why should he? He's gonna die, he's...

Family.

Just...

Olivia, just... that was the greatest thing.

JEANNE: All he wanted to be was a grandpa.

And he really kind of lost interest.

It was... the record label and the store were almost second to him,

that was his whole life then.

He had a granddaughter,

and he left work early to be with her.

BILL: When I went into the record store, it was... I was...

I was really saddened by what I saw cause it was just,

"Wow, this is not Wax Trax!."

This isn't even the first store on...

Ogden Avenue and Denver's Wax Trax! This was just a shell.

It was a place to put some records

so that you still had a record store, I guess. I don't know.

You know, things changed when it moved to Damen, okay, we know that.

That's just a fact.

I mean, the store was such a presence to me on Lincoln Avenue.

Walking into the Damen store was just like...

was like, "Well, we have a store 'cause we have to."

Basically, it just seemed like it was made up of Wax Trax! records,

inventory from our label, Wax Trax! label,

and then some random records left over from the store on Lincoln Avenue.

The record store was basically non-existent,

but, yeah, at that time, I don't think...

I don't even know if Jim cared whether he had a record store,

I think he just put it there.

Walking into the label, it was...

Again, just this amazing feeling, but there was a lot of tension.

There was a lot of stuff going on at that time.

You know, Jim was sick.

Dannie was running around, and...

they had just formed this alliance with TVT.

And there were a lot of people that weren't really into it.

So a lot of the staff that were there,

was not all that happy that TVT was now calling the shots.

JULIA: Sometimes he'd be feeling like shit, and he was sick, and he'd be in bed.

And that was that. But every day, I was over there,

I mean, he'd either be attached to an IV pole running around the apartment.

But he didn't... He wasn't really any different.

There were a couple of times when he was... really sick.

I feel like it was like March of '95, maybe.

March, April, and it was like, okay, he is dying.

JEANNE: He asked me to come up. He said, "I'll buy you a ticket.

"I just want you to come up here."

And so I did.

And we all kinda stayed together at the apartment.

So I went in and I got him a soda cracker and I brought it back.

And he started to eat it, and he said,

"Do you think you could give me some water?

"Something to drink with this?" And I said, "No."

He said, and it was almost too good to be true,

"What did I ever do to you?"

And I said, "Well, where should we begin?"

And we always had that kind of relationship.

He had humor till the end. He really did.

Somewhere.

We're in the front room saying goodbye to Dannie, had already said goodbye to Dad.

And he got up out of bed and walked into the kitchen,

which he wasn't doing on his own.

And stood in the doorway of the kitchen and his bedroom, and just stood there,

and Dannie and I were looking at him, like, "What're you doing?"

He's like, "I just wanted to say goodbye again," with a huge smile.

I'm like. "Okay, Dad. Goodbye. I'll see you tomorrow."

And he turned around and went back to bed, and that morning, the next morning,

I got the call from Dannie.

MAN: A sad note to report.

Jim Nash, president and co-founder of Wax Trax! Records,

died from AIDS on Tuesday at the age of 47.

Based here in Chicago, Wax Trax! is credited with

pioneering the industrial music genre, with artists such as Ministry, RevCo,

KMFDM and Front 242.

GINA: We were trying to get a game plan for the next morning,

because we knew it was gonna be pandemonium.

We knew the phones were gonna be crazy.

So the next morning, we came to work, business as usual,

but just ready for the circus that was about to happen.

And our phones were very, very busy, and it was...

people we didn't know, just fans, and of course, friends and family calling,

just to make sure that what they had heard was real,

trying to get in touch with Julia or Dannie.

So, it was a crazy day.

DANNIE: In just about two seconds, we're going to be done.

MAN: I was wondering if I could ask you a couple of questions about your partner,

about Jim?

I was just wondering if you could just, you know, tell me...

how you decided to get together, and what're your memories of him?

We met in 1972 at a... in Topeka, Kansas,

and we went to a David Bowie concert.

And...

Wait a minute.

I don't know what to say about Jim. He's... It's like...

Once he passed away, it just took half of me, you know?

Half of the company, half of the excitement.

I'm totally getting back into this...

JULIA: It made a lot of sense why Dannie was so, kind of, just like...

...spinning, and not grounded at all, and just like...

...was just lost, because I felt that way.

In a sense, we were kind of, like, controlled by my Dad,

who controlled a lot of shit, what was going on.

And so to have that person not there, controlling you every

kind of what was going on, what was happening, you know,

you're just kind of like, "What now?"

And, so I can't even imagine how Dannie felt after 27 years of that.

I felt terribly for Dannie.

You know? I just, I couldn't...

imagine what that was like for him. I mean, He really lost more than his partner.

He lost his whole life. He lost such a big chunk of his life.

Personally, obviously, but professionally, too.

I don't think he wanted to be in a position to run a label.

I think at that point, he was just a figurehead, it was a name.

He wasn't running it, you know. TVT was obviously in charge.

You know, Dannie just...

...was a name on a piece of paper that had, you know...

But I don't think he cared about any of those bands or anything.

I don't think he cared about a lot after that.

Wax Trax! I think was pretty much... dead to him.

TVT was a great, big, unfocused monster, that didn't really know what it wanted.

Which kind of made that whole thing an impossible situation for Dannie.

GINA: I don't think that Dannie was...

a willing participant anymore in their arrangement.

I don't think they wanted to pay Dannie anymore, either.

They severed the ties, and...

paid off whatever obligations they had,

and they had come to me and said,

"We're going to close the Chicago office."

JULIA: Right away, there was definitely...

Dannie had a lot of sadness.

He was a lot quieter. You know, that was the only change in the beginning,

and that was expected.

Then it gradually started to become, he was going out all the time,

and never around, and... I think when...

I noticed things really kind of getting weird was when I had to tell him,

"You can't take this kind of money out of the ATM every day,

"because you're not bringing that kind of money in.

"And you're maxing out what you can take.

"It's gone."

JEANNE: Dannie was on drugs for his AIDS.

And I think he was probably doing a few other things along with it.

And he really wasn't...

Not the Dannie we knew. He was not himself at that point in time.

I know there were several times after the office closed,

where we were in the city doing stuff, and I would swing by just to say hi,

and there were times when he didn't want any company at all.

That was unlike him. Usually, he'd be like, "Oh, come on up and have a beer!

"Smoke a joint, whatever!"

But he became a little reclusive.

FRANKIE: That period was another twist for all of us.

Leaving town, and going and living at his mom's house.

GINA: I'd heard he was spending a lot of time in Arkansas with his family.

I know that we would drive by the office, and the first floor had been

turned into retail, and the garage was a pizza place.

You know, it was just, so bizarre.

I'd get little snippets of what was going on,

that he'd moved to Arkansas, all this sort of stuff.

So I knew that he was there.

And then I'd heard that no one could get a hold of him.

I don't think I spoke to him once after he moved to Arkansas.

Dannie just disconnected...

and it's kind of a blur what happened. We've heard stories.

But we don't really know.

GINA: But it's almost like he didn't want anyone's help. He just...

I think he just wanted to die, and... and that's it.

JULIA: And, you know, I'd promised him,

when my dad was at his sickest, and after he'd passed away,

I'm like, "You know, Dannie,

"you have nothing to worry about. If you ever get sick,

"you're living with us. We're taking care of you.

"This is where you're gonna be."

He... There was never, for one second,

that he wasn't gonna be... He was my parent.

You know? He was another parent.

CHRIS: He'd kinda disappeared, not off my radar,

it wasn't like I wasn't thinking about him, I just wasn't there anymore.

I had seen him a couple of times, and then I didn't... see him.

And...

Then I got...

A few phone calls.

You know...

'Cause we didn't know. And then I found out.

WOMAN: We've got some guests here with us

talking about something happening on Chicago's north side.

MAN: Metro Theater in the north side will hold a three-night multimedia concert

in honor of the legendary Wax Trax! Records,

appropriately called the Wax Trax! 33 and a third year anniversary.

WOMAN: Metro owner Joe Shanahan is here

and Julia Nash, whose father was one of the founders of Wax Trax!

-Thanks for being here, guys. -JOE: Good morning.

MAN: Tell us about the music we will hear.

I mean, you're putting the bands back together in some form or fashion.

JOE: I think there was a ten-year breather where people were...

Yeah, nobody cares, you know?

People like me? Yeah, my Wax Trax! CDs were in boxes, you know.

They weren't out and open, you know.

They were in storage! They were in storage in my apartment.

JULIA: I was saying, "Are you sure, three days?"

Are you sure people are going to come to this?"

I still... I was questioning, like,

Really? This may not be a good idea.

I thought it was just like a little local good-time shop, you know?

I didn't know that it reached so far and wide,

that people traveled from all over to come to that store. I had no clue.

PATTY: And it was the first time that I recognized...

that power. Because I was friends with them since 1974.

But it didn't occur to me what they had done.

AL: Turned the fucking world on its ear for a while, man.

It gave so many people encouragement, hope, drive, to do what we were doing.

It was inspiration to a lot of people that I can see now in retrospect.

You don't know that's going on while it's happening.

BILL LEEB: I look at Wax Trax! You can't separate Wax Trax! from Jim and Dannie.

And then all of the people that embraced that,

and sort of followed their madcap adventure.

LUC VAN: It was a celebration of people who loved being part of this group,

you know, like this scene.

If you've never been part of a scene or community,

that's impossible to explain, you know?

JULIA: People were coming up to me the entire time.

Every single minute, I was grabbed by someone else,

that I'd never met before in my life,

that was telling me how... how their life has been changed forever

because of the music they put out on that label.

And that's what made me think like,

this is an important story.

Because what I thought was just these two guys and their love for music,

and their excitement for it all.

To have that kind of an impact on people and their lives,

and people around the world, for that matter, that's a huge thing.

PATRICK: I think a lot of people realize how important Wax Trax! was for them.

Not only musicians, bands, but the audience.

How many times did I read, "Wax Trax! changed my life"?

How many times did I read it? And I can tell you,

even for me, Wax Trax! changed my life.

PATTY: I saw, like, the love...

in the music that they had developed, it was... profound to me.

BILL LEEB: It's a live, thriving, great thing that will always be there.

LUC VAN: It's not nostalgia.

It's a continuation. And I think that's what I wanna say,

It's something Jim and Dannie started, and which is still going.

FRANKIE: Nothing ends...

Unless you say it's over. You know?

[INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING]

[VOCALIZING]

♪ Minds are empty, heads are hollow

♪ You might find out The truth is hard to swallow

♪ There's a place down there, Where heads are square

♪ Laws are tough, and you are bare

♪ There is a law And there is a lawman

♪ Who is the right And who is the wrong man

♪ It doesn't take much To kill that guy

♪ Don't get in my face And ask me why

♪ Texas is the place

♪ Hang 'em high

♪ Beers, steers, and queers

♪ Cowboy

♪ Beers, steers, and queers

♪ Texas is full of women And willing

♪ Eyes too close Billy hillbillies

♪ Who are these people Raised in bars...

♪ Sex on farms

♪ Texas hoedown This is the lowdown

♪ You're full of shit Destined to go down

♪ Let's go down, herd 'em up

♪ If you agree Then let's word 'em up

♪ And if you don't

♪ Then shut the fuck up

♪ Beers, steers, and queers

♪ Beers, steers, and queers

[VOCALIZING]

♪ I've spent my life Go kicking shit

♪ Not gonna give up Ain't about to quit

♪ Life is a bucket of...

♪ Gettin' rough feeding stock

♪ Get in my way

♪ I'll knock you off

♪ Beers, steers, and queers

♪ Cowboy

♪ Beers, steers, and queers

[VOCALIZING]

♪ Beers, steers, and queers

♪ Cowboy

♪ Beers, steers, and queers

♪ I'm a crazy mother In a drunken state

♪ A redneck asswipe Who thinks he's great

♪ So full of shit Diarrhea for fingers... ♪