Nash the Slash: "Dead Man's Curve"

22 January 1981

"At last! A hero for the walking wounded."

 — Ronnie Gurr

We're in a boardgame cafe on Toronto's Yonge Street. He chooses the Strawberry Shortcake game and I happily agree. As ever, I'm keen to sit on the bench with Orange Blossom. He kicks my ass and wants to play again. I agree so that I can return to my Platonic affair with the girl on the top left corner of the board. He tells me that he hates boardgames other than this one and Mastermind. I consider switching games but hesitate due to my loyalty to Orange Blossom. Besides, Mastermind makes me feel like an imbecile. Kids at a corner table are enjoying Popamatic Trouble and we roll our eyes. It's a best four out of seven Strawberry Shortcake game contest for us and he's looking at a sweep.

Nashville Thebodiah Slasher isn't interested in talking about music and I'm not interested in asking him any of the questions I have prepared. I jotted down a bunch of useless queries about the trademark bandages he has wrapped around his head at all times and if he thinks he's influenced by Captain Beefheart and The Residents but I figure he's been asked these a million times before. Instead, as we're getting set for the third game, I ask him about other bands and types of music. I decide we should do some word association. I start gingerly but it doesn't take long before we're rolling. (For his part, Nash scarcely looks up from our game)

PiL: burial

Lene Lovich: rumpus room

Hazel O'Connor: smalltown mayors

Blondie: helpless

Talking Heads: emotional

The Police: pea soup

The Jam: achievement

Squeeze: gum boots

The Pretenders: astro pops

Bruce Springsteen: manufacturing

ABBA: cotton

Paul McCartney: consituency

Gary Numan: funeral

Toyah: chain link fences

Queen: pigeon toes

Stevie Wonder: relationships

Kate Bush: bed pans

Adam & The Ants: inhabitable

XTC: braids

The Specials: back bacon

Ian Dury: bricklaying

Nash the Slash: Circle Square Rancher

Not much revealed there (though it is nice to discover that the Nasher is a strong Christian soldier). Deciding that we've had enough shenanigans, I finish up my visit with Orange Blossom and work up the courage to ask him about his latest record. It is what Smash Hits have flown me over to Canada for. So, Mr. Slash, what made you want to cover "Dead Man's Curve"? Do you like exploring the dark side of innocent pop?

"No", he says while rolling the dice, "it was already dark. I gave it some much needed sunshine".

I suppose you could argue that's what he did. So how much of your public persona matches your private self?

"Nash and Nashville are mostly the same but I try to tone it down a little when I'm out in public. If people think I wear too many bandages they should see me at home".

Does he wrap certain "appendages" in bandages at home?

"You mean my arms and legs? Or the outsized skin tag under my arms pits?"

Yeah, those ones. So, is it true you won't use guitars on your records?

"I'd use a guitar if I could get some different sounds of them. Other instruments are able to sound like guitars but guitars only sound like themselves."

Do you reckon you're cut out for the pop life?

"I must be since my last job was decorating birthday cakes. I got fired after just a few weeks but I still haven't been canned from this one."

All these questions have thrown off his nibs and we're neck and neck in the fourth game. I hope Orange Blossom won't leave me in for him. His strategy of playing hard to get with her appears to be paying off. I'll have to make it up to her somehow. I'm beginning to suspect that the Slasher has found my weakness. I'd better try to get into his head with some more questions. What does he think of making music videos?

"I love making videos. They're much more fun than most of the records. I suggested to my record label that we do a silent music video but they said no."

A silent music video???

"Yeah, like a silent movie but without the music playing. Most songs sound better in my head anyway."

What does Nash like to do for fun?

"Oh, the usual. Cooking shows on TV, slurpees and walking away in the middle of conversations. I'm a simple guy with simple pleasures."

Try as I might, Nash the Slash sweeps me in Strawberry Shortcake game. I ask him if he'd like to play Mille Bornes but he politely declines. He's got a doctor's appointment prior to his concert here in Toronto. The man is one of a kind and he doesn't even know it.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

John Lennon: "Woman"

"Everyone thinks it's about my woman but it's really about 99% of the women, alive or half dead". This is not something John Lennon uttered in his lifetime but he might have done had he lived longer. One of his strengths was to make the personal seem so universal and he did it here just as he did on "Girl" and "Mother" years earlier. ("Julia" is perhaps his one personal statement to a woman that could never have been masked as something else) It probably did seem like pablum in November of 1980 but it has never not been poignant ever since. Lennon detractors will predictably trot out stuff about him beating women but he did try to atone for his sinful past. Well done.

Neil Young: "Hawks and Doves"

11 December 1980

"The old country waltz updated. Young has class enough to urinate all over the field here."

— Ronnie Gurr

As I suggested previously, there didn't appear to be a lot of quality material vying for the 1980 Christmas number one. There were a fair share of big names (the now-sadly deceased John Lennon being the biggest of them all) but few were offering their best work. Yet, here we are just two weeks away from the big day and the singles review page in Smash Hits is teeming with quality. Sure, The Police's "De Do Do Do De Da Da Da" is as rubbish as ever and I will never comprehend the appeal of Adam & The Ants — even if "Ant Music" is one of their better efforts — but there are some excellent, if relatively minor, singles on offer as well. 

XTC were coming off a year that should have broken them big but their creative momentum was such that the seemingly tossed off "Take This Town" from the Times Square film soundtrack is nevertheless quite wonderful. The Clash's "The Call Up" was largely ignored by record buyers and is generally forgotten today but it ought to be ranked in the top flight of their singles. Dexys Midnight Runners were already moving on from their Searching for the Young Soul Rebels album with the brand new release "Keep It Part Two (Inferiority Part One)", which Kevin Rowland must have known was destined to be a chart longshot despite being as good as anything they'd done up to that point. Ronnie Gurr puts all seasonal releases together in a mass round up which give short shrift to Kate Bush's lovely "December Will Be Magic Again", which probably should have performed much better than it did. And then there was yet more fresh product from one of the leading groups of 1980 who were only just hitting their peak.

The Specials had only emerged as a national concern in 1979 with the brilliant "Gangsters" and they went on a run of unbeatable singles — "A Message to You Rudy"/"Nite Club", The Special AKA Live!, "Rat Race", "Stereotype". With The Specials and More Specials being similarly outstanding albums, with some fine B-sides to boot, there wasn't a better group in Britain during their two year prime. A flash in the pan they may have been but, as a certain wise old songsmith once said, it's better to burn out than fade away. (They left the fading away to their second incarnation following the departures of Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Neville Staple six months later) Their fans would have become accustomed to their exceptionally high standards by this point and "Do Nothing" didn't let them down.

Like most Smash Hits reviewers of the time, Ronnie Gurr doesn't specify a Single of the Fortnight and I had assumed that this latest single from The Specials was is his pick of the litter here, and not just because it would certainly have been my choice. "Great Reginald Dixon sound from Jerry Dammers and more exemplary trombone etchings from Rico," Gurr coos. "A truly excellent single". High praise to edge it above Adam Ant ("Pretty irresistible actually"), XTC ("...a great single") and The Clash ("In which The Clash prove that they really are the failure creeps you suspected all along": he likes this record, right?) and that was good enough for me. Then, I happened to read the entire singles page and discovered that he likes it when whiny Canadians take a giant piss all over their competitors. Classy indeed.

I often think of Neil Young as the ultimate example of an artist who only does slow songs. Of course, he has recorded countless faster-paced rockers over his lengthy career but are the bulk of them any good? (I've heard plenty of them in my time but I can't think of a single one that managed to make any kind of impression on me) Certainly it's not the louder material that makes me think of the so-called Godfather of Grunge. I associate Young with "Expecting to Fly", "After the Goldrush", "Helpless", "Heart of Gold", "Old Man", "Like a Hurricane", "Harvest Moon" and "Philadelphia" and I can give or take the faster and the harder stuff — even the updated country waltz stuff.

That's not to say that "Hawks and Doves" is poor. It's well made and he has one of those backing bands that everyone describes as "crack". As is typical, Neil Young doesn't exactly bowl you over with his vocal prowess but he does sound more self-assured and even a bit playful here. And there's a message about accepting people in there somewhere. The US had just elected Ronald Regan into the White House so it was timely to have a blue-collar anthem that tried to reach out across the aisle. (It could easily find a home in our current climate as well with all that culture war nonsense) 

But after a week of listening, I still haven't warmed fully to it nor has it gotten on my nerves to any real extent. It doesn't enhance my appreciation for Young not does it lower my opinion of him. I never need to hear "Hawks and Doves" again nor will I actively try to avoid it. He did some good country-ish recordings in his day (I'd take the decidedly more mellow Comes a Time over the roughhouse country rock of the Hawks & Doves album) often because gentler styles tended to bring out his more reflective side. This is why the "ballads" tend to stand out and why they're the numbers I'll keep revisiting.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Steely Dan: "Hey Nineteen"

Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were in their early thirties when Steely Dan's seventh album Gaucho came out. They had previously been on an album-a-year streak from 1972's Can't Buy a Thrill to 1977's Aja but this one took a lot longer to finish. As a result, the duo may well have still been in their twenties when they composed this paean to midlife crisis. The Dan of old would have been happy to make "Hey Nineteen" into an amusing romp but there's real loneliness and desperation. How many fifty-year-old men have left their wives for a pretty young thing only to realise that they, too, got nothing in common. The surprisingly poignant "the Cuervo Gold, the fine Colombian" section could be about being all alone but even if "Nineteen" is present, it seems likely that this gentleman feels much more of a connection with his selection of narcotics than any human company. Another classic Steely Dan single — and the closest competition for The Specials.