WaxTrax! Records - The Black Box

Before I begin, I'd like to make it clear that this is in no way intended to be a definitive retrospective or eulogy or whatever for WaxTrax! Records, it's simply a little bit of back story about where they went and why I love their releases with a healthy sampling of their catalog. I hope you enjoy.



Earlier this year, Dannie Flesher, co-founder of Chicago's WaxTrax! Records passed away, marking the definitive end of an era which has been comatose since 1992 when the label was purchased by TVT Records. It didn't help that Jim Nash, WaxTrax!'s other founder died in 1995, but TVT did most of the dirty work to kill what was left over by signing acts that didn't fit the label's image and letting most of the discography go out of print. Now, I'm not saying anything bad about Autechre, Underworld or anyone else for which distribution agreements were made, but they simply didn't fit the WaxTrax! aesthetic, and while it could be argued that TVT was merely trying to make their investment profitable, it's rare that changing an already successful formula leads to continued success.

WaxTrax! was a special label. Like most labels that people loved or looked upon the releases of like a badge of honor, WaxTrax! was very artist friendly and signed people they liked, not just because they thought there was money to be made but because they believed in the music. WaxTrax! was most often looked at as the American home of industrial music, and while a lot of the industrial scene was cultivated in their roster, they were more about clubs and dancing. Listen to records by My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, Ministry, KMFDM and other acts on the label and try not to get the urge to move. The artists and bands on the label were just as much about their music as they were living their own lives, for better or worse. Drugs, sex, abuse and violence were all significant characteristics of WaxTrax! and their talent, and while it's hard to defend some of those things, you can't deny that they produced great music and wonderful entertainment. Of course, some of those artists didn't know when to say when (here's looking at you Al), but that always happens to some of them, doesn't it?

A few years ago, when TVT finally bit the dust (hooray!), pieces of the WaxTrax! catalog were sold off and licensed to select outlets. Probably the most high-profile licensing agreement was the rights to Ministry's early releases from the label under all their various guises (Revolting Cocks, 1000 Homo DJs, PTP, etc.) as well as My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult's WaxTrax! catalog and Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine, which while it wasn't a WaxTrax! release was owned by TVT in the US and NIN were closely aligned with the Chicago scene. KMFDM also regained the rights to their US catalog and began a complete reissue program. KMFDM signed with Metropolis, but the other reissues were distributed by Ryko who are sort-of out of business due to having been purchased by Warner Brothers Records. It's unclear whether Warners has the right to issue everything in Ryko's catalog, but for now it doesn't matter as none of those releases are available for purchase. As if the end of the CD era wasn't a bad enough time to have your catalog go out of print again.

Despite all this, WaxTrax! still has a beloved following, eventually resulting in Bart Pfanenstiel, a former WaxTrax! employee, starting a new label, WTII Records, to carry on the torch, but as far as I can tell that didn't last for long. Now the WaxTrax! catalog is primarily out of print, at least in the US, and will probably remain that way for the foreseeable future. It's really a shame, but sometimes I wonder about the truth of that old rock'n'roll line, it's better to burn out than fade away. WaxTrax! burnt out because of mismanagement and their having been bought by a label not truly concerned with their legacy. That's bad enough, but now they're fading away because no one has been concerned with their legacy for years. Burn out or fade away, either way it kinda sucks, but both at the same time? That's just wrong.

I would like to share some memories of WaxTrax! with you by posting the Black Box collection, a three CD set TVT released shortly after purchasing the label. It's certainly not definitive and I've mocked it's miserable liner notes many times (if the only version of a song released was on an EP, why label it the EP Version? Does it require a special label? WTF?!?), but the music is wonderful and most of it is now unavailable, so enjoy a jumbo jolt of WaxTrax! goodies available below. On top of that, if you'd like to read up on the label a bit more you can always access their wikipedia reference which is pretty detailed. Enjoy!


Black Box – Wax Trax! Records: The First 13 Years

Disc One:
01 1000 Homo DJs - Supernaut (Trent Reznor Version)
The track that really launched a war between WaxTrax! and TVT! This was supposed to be on the original version of the Supernaut single, but upon Steve Gottlieb from TVT finding out, he nixed Trent's appearance. Years later, after purchasing WaxTrax!, he issued this track in this compilation, which is the only place it has ever been officially released. Trent is still mad. Eat your heart out Stevie!

02 Revolting Cocks - No Devotion
03 Revolting Cocks - Beers, Steers and Queers (Drop Yer Britches Mix)
This is the first half of the remix which appeared on the 12" and CD single. For some reason, that remix, which is listed as two separate tracks, has almost always been stuck together as one.

04 Sister Machine Gun - Addiction
05 Excessive Force - Violent Peace
06 The Young Gods - Envoye
07 Pailhead - I Will Refuse
Ministry with Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat and Fugazi

08 Lead Into Gold - Faster Than Light
Ministry's Paul Barker with Al and company helping out.

09 Front Line Assembly - Digital Tension Dementia
10 Mussolini Headkick - Your God Is Dead
11 Greater Than One - Now Is The Time
12 Pig - Shit For Brains
13 Hope & Kirk - Cop Out
14 Wreck - Atomic Dog
Yes, a cover of THAT Atomic Dog. Bow wow wow yipee yo yipee yay!

15 Strike Under - Elephant's Graveyard

Disc Two:
01 Chris Connelly - Stowaway
02 Chris Connelly - Come Down Here
03 Coil - Love's Secret Domain
04 Coil - The Snow (Answers Come In Dreams II by Meat Beat Manifesto)
05 Clock DVA - The Hacker
06 KMFDM - Virus
07 KMFDM - Godlike
08 Ministry - Every Day (Is Halloween)
The classic. If you're gonna go goth, you've gotta go Halloween!

09 A Split Second - Rigor Mortis
10 Foetus - Butterfly Potion
11 Doubting Thomas - Father Don't Cry
12 Cyberaktif - Nothing Stays
13 Controlled Bleeding - Words (Of The Dying)
14 In The Nursery - Compulsion

Disc Three:
01 PTP - Rubber Glove Seduction
02 Acid Horse - No Name, No Slogan (Luxa/Pan Version)
As mentioned in an earlier post, the above two tracks are both Ministry side projects. The box's liner notes list the Acid Horse track as the 12" Version. Well, since the release was only available on 12" and both tracks were versions of the same song, I've gotta say that someone at TVT really wasn't doing their job. No shock there.

03 The KLF - What Time Is Love? (Live At Trancentral)
This version has a little bit of extra audience noise at the end which doesn't seem to appear on most versions I've found.

04 Psykosonik - Silicon Jesus (Duality Mix)
05 My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult - A Girl Doesn't Get Killed By A Make-Believe Lover... 'Cuz It's Hot
06 My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult - Do You Fear (For Your Child)
07 Laibach - Geburt Einer Nation
08 Meat Beat Manifesto - God O.D. (Single Version)
09 Fred - Mindblower
10 Psychic TV - I.C. Water
11 Pankow - Me & My Ding Dong
12 Divine - The Name Game
Oh my god, this is the track! If you don't know who Divine is/was, go here and be entertained! mein gott im himmel!!!

PS - In case you're wondering why Front 242 isn't featured in this collection, at the time of TVT's acquisition of WaxTrax!, Front 242 were signed to Epic and there were licensing issues which prevented any of their tracks from being featured. If you want your Front 242 fix, go find a copy of Front By Front and get blissed out!

PTP - Rubber Glove Seduction

Think of this as the precursor to the WaxTrax! post that will appear next week, as part of what made that label so unique was it's incestuous relationship between it's artists and their various projects. Probably the most productive of the label's artists was Al Jourgensen who was best known for recording as Ministry, often with Paul Barker, but after signing with Sire Records they began releasing excess recordings and side projects under varying aliases at a ridiculous rate via WaxTrax! Records. Some of these other groups, most of which consisted of the same people who worked as Ministry, were Revolting Cocks (with Luc Van Acker), Lard (with Jello Biafra), Lead Into Gold (primarily a solo vehicle for Paul Barker), Pailhead (with Ian MacKaye), 1000 Homo DJs (with Jello and Trent Reznor), Acid Horse (with Cabaret Voltaire) and PTP (with Chris Connelly and Ogre). Revolting Cocks, 1000 Homo DJs, Lard and Pailhead are pretty well known, but PTP and Acid Horse are sadly overlooked gems among these alternate identities.

PTP is short for Programming The Psychodrill, a JG Ballard reference which I suppose one doesn't need get to enjoy the music. I'd read in an interview with Jourgensen that PTP was intended as a new solo vehicle for himself, one where he'd tour by himself, playing small clubs, with nothing more than a Marshall Stack, a Fairlite, and one would assume a guitar, but apart from one ridiculous 12" very little came of that promise. Of course, we're talking about Al Jourgensen here, a guy who has been known to tell interviewers tall tales about whatever came to his mind, for instance answering when asked where they got their synths and guitar equipment that Ministry merely picked up things from Radio Shack without any prior knowledge to the instruments and their abilities. There is a neat myth built with those stories, but unlike Kurt Cobain talking about living under a bridge (didn't happen) or Bob Dylan recording albums' worth of material in a basement while recovering from a broken neck (totally happened!), these ones are easy to write off or ignore in favor of the music's depth, which is clearly far greater than the supposed ignorance involved in it's creation.

Rubber Glove Seduction featured two tracks, both primarily helmed by Jourgensen with help from longtime collaborators Chris Connelly and Paul Barker. Supposedly, Rubber Glove Seduction was something of an underground club hit, which is believable, although I can't find any proof of it. Chris Connelly's haunting monotone, talking about a kitchen clock, a wife and a knife, feels like some kind of ridiculous drug joke, and probably would be thoroughly unsatisfying on it's own if it weren't for Jourgensen's bizarre disco beat and crazy sound effects. There are sped-up recordings of cops from a television show, sirens panning from speaker to speaker, people talking about who knows what running underneath the track, and the song ending with someone forcefully tearing the needle off the record. All together, it's strangely funky, danceable, hilarious, kinky and bizarre, and as such earns a special place in my heart. Would've been nice if the project had continued, but I suppose, like most things Jourgensen-related, the brilliance at hand was related to whatever chemicals were present at the time.

The b-side was My Favorite Things, once again featuring Connelly's vocals, albeit in a very goth way, not dissimilar to Jourgensen's own vocals throughout his early works like Halloween or the Twitch album, which has led to many assuming incorrectly that Jourgensen was indeed singing here. The track started it's life as I See Red, a Ministry contribution intended for a PETA compilation that was recorded during the Twitch era. Unfortunately, Sire Records, Ministry's then-label would not allow them to appear on the comp which was to be released on WaxTrax!, so the track remained unreleased until circa 1989, when Connelly wrote the new, Sound Of Music cribbing lyrics, thus making it a new and different song. It's a great example of Jourgensen's automated war-machine music with it's pounding drums, glam-sounding guitar solos and Connelly's vocals.

Those two songs were the sole releases by PTP until 2004 when Ryko, who had licensed significant chunks of the WaxTrax! catalog after TVT Records' demise, briefly released a compilation of Jourgensen's shorter-lived side projects from the WaxTrax! days as a Ministry compilation named Side Trax. Upon this gem was a previously unreleased PTP track, Show Me Your Spine, which featured Ogre from Skinny Puppy on vocals in his first collaboration with Jourgensen. The song, otherwise, only made a brief appearance in the first Robo Cop film as a replacement for a Ministry track that Sire was asking simply too much money for. It dates from 1987 so it's more akin to Jourgensen's sound from the Twitch era as opposed to the more refined, mechanized warfare of Rubber Glove Seduction and it's b-side.

It's worth noting that the PTP line-up recorded at least one other song that saw release, although not as PTP. Rather, Ministry collaborated with Cabaret Voltaire to record No Name, No Slogan, which saw release under the name Acid Horse. A different version of the track was featured on each side of the single, the first being a Luxa/Pan produced version, the production alias for Jourgensen and Barker, with the second being the Cabaret Voltaire version. The Luxa/Pan version strongly resembles the production of Rubber Glove Seduction, even featuring Connelly's dry monotone all over again, although the track isn't nearly as insane and therefore doesn't hold the same charm, instead coming off almost as though it were unfinished. On the other hand, the Cabaret Voltaire version is electric and intense, with samples from Clint Eastwood westerns and vocoder running throughout it's nine minutes, giving one the funky heebie-jeebies! Both groups took writing credit for both versions of the song, though who knows how the song actually originated. With a title like No Name, No Slogan, it sounds like they decided how they wanted their collaboration to go over, but probably had to pick a better sounding band-name before releasing the final product. Acid Horse, one would assume, is either a joke about acid house or a list of the collaborator's favorite chemical substances, something that sounds believable either way.

Most of these events all occurred circa 1989, smack in the middle of Ministry's golden age spanning the releases of The Land Of Rape and Honey, The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste and Psalm 69. Sadly, while the post-Psalm 69 era of Ministry releases weren't horrid, they certainly weren't nearly as inspired, probably in large part to Jourgensen's growing chemical addictions. Arrests, overdoses, and rumors of adult diapers circulated from Filth Pig onward, until Jourgensen apparently got clean, found himself in the middle of a vicious divorce, got dropped by their long-time label and eventually rediscovered himself by returning Ministry's sound to that of an electric biker band bent on destroying everything in it's path and focusing it's attention on Jourgensen's obsessively unhealthy disdain for George W. Bush. On top of all this, Paul Barker left the group for undisclosed reasons, which changed the dynamics thoroughly, eventually leading to Jourgensen retiring the Ministry name in favor of continuing to record as Revolting Cocks, now generally referred to as RevCo. As much as it sucks that inspired side-projects like these of his WaxTrax! days are never to reappear, at least what saw release is thoroughly unforgettable.

For your listening pleasure, I've included downloads of both the PTP and Acid Horse singles here, but I've also posted extra downloads of PTP's Show Me Your Spine and a version of Ministry's unreleased I See Red. Show Me Your Spine sounds wonderful, but please forgive the lack of fidelity on I See Red as it sounds like someone recorded it with a hand-held tape-deck. Essential listening though, as it's all very funky!


PTP - Rubber Glove Seduction



01 Rubber Glove Seduction
02 My Favorite Things


Acid Horse - No Name, No Slogan



01 No Name, No Slogan (Luxa/Pan Version)
02 No Name, No Slogan (Cabaret Voltaire Version)


PTP - Show Me Your Spine

Ministry - I See Red