In the form of a retirement announcement, around 2010.
His website has been renamed “the Gravesite.”
Please read the whole thing, especially the many “thank yous”:
I’m proud of my remarkable 40-year career in the music biz with no hit (commercial) records. As an independent artist without management, major label support or any grants whatsoever (thank you Canada Council and Factor), I toured internationally and accomplished so much. I was unique on stage and on my recordings. I refused to be slick and artificial. I opened for and toured with some of the best musicians in the world, and was regarded highly by my peers.
Rolling Stone journalist Lester Bangs once reported, “Nash the Slash is the kind of opening act that makes the headliner work twice as hard”.
I created one of the first Canadian independent record labels (Cut-Throat Records) in order to release my music and merchandise to the public.
I was the first Canadian musician to use a drum machine on an album (1978), at a time when drum machines were outlawed according to the bylaws of the Toronto Musicians’ Association. I was the first to record an album, ‘Decomposing’, which was listen-able at any speed, and miraculously reviewed in Playboy magazine. I composed and produced music for film and television, and for multi-media exhibitions of the surrealist paintings by my friend Robert Vanderhorst.
I hold the distinction of suing the corporate giant Pepsi Cola of Canada for one million dollars (in the Ontario Supreme Court, 1982) for ‘misappropriation of personality’; I won but received no money, just bragging rights.
Like pretty much every Canadian, living or dead, I saw Nash the Slash open for a couple of acts. He was a one-man band, a super-talented musician literally hiding behind a gimmicky novelty “look.”
He always radiated kind of perfectionist professionalism and contagious energy. Part of that energy probably reflected his principled independence and sense of personal freedom, as described above.
