R.I.P. Nash the Slash (FM)

Bandaged rock violinist Nash the Slash, a.k.a. Jeff Plewman, dead at 6 6

Jeff Plewman, the Toronto electric violinist and experimental musician who performed as Nash the Slash with his face enveloped in surgical bandages, has died. He was 66.



His death was announced on Facebook by friend and collaborator Robert Vanderhorst, who wrote that Plewman passed away over the weekend. Vanderhorst also confirmed the death in an interview with the Toronto Star.



Plewman co-founded the progressive-rock band FM, who issued their debut “Black Noise” in 1977, and quickly established a long career as an eccentric solo artist whose compositions were nominally new wave but really, impossible to classify in a tidy fashion.



He was secretive about his identity, performing with a tuxedo, top hat and sunglasses as well as the rags on his face, and he was evasive when asked in interviews for his real name.

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“When he performed … you couldn’t even grasp how he was doing it. He would play a couple riffs on his electric mandolin and he would create a loop for it — and people back then didn’t even know what a loop was.



“It sounded like this huge band and it was this guy sitting there in a tuxedo and a top hat, you know?”

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Plewman announced his retirement from music in 2012, writing on his website that it was “time to roll up the bandages.” In a long posting, he wrote that he “refused to be slick and artificial,” and noted his pride in a “remarkable 40-year career in the music biz with no hit (commercial) records.”

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By way of explaining his retirement, he wrote about the way file-sharing had “devastated” an important source of income, .... “He was very fed up with how easy it was for people to access his music and not get paid for it.”

(Canada.com)



Perhaps my favourite track from Nash and FM:

+ YouTube Video

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