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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