Chicago commission votes to make former Wax Trax! Records building a landmark
CHICAGO (CBS) -- For years, a storefront on Lincoln Avenue in the Lincoln Park neighborhood was a mecca for fans of punk, industrial, and new wave — helping launch careers and shape the direction of underground music.
Now, there is a move to protect the old home of Wax Trax! Records, and it came down to a vote Thursday in City Hall.
The old Wax Trax! Records building is located at 2449 N. Lincoln Ave., about half a block northwest of the six-way intersection with Halsted Street and Fullerton Avenue.
The building most recently housed the Lincoln Park Institute for Oral & Cosmetic Surgery. Today, it is up for sale as a medical building, and has stale Christmas decorations in its front window.
The forest green Renaissance Revival cornice, the mascarons — or ornamental sculpted faces — and the white and green glazed brickwork still pop, even with a blank black sign sticking out. But it's easier to miss than it was from 1978 until 1993.
It was for those 15 years that the building housed Wax Trax! Records.
"It was a creative mecca; an epicenter for acceptance, music," said Julia Nash. "It was an amazing place."
It was also a playground for Nash as a young person. Her father, Jim Nash, founded Wax Trax! Records with business partner Dannie Flesher.
As noted in a summary submitted to the Commission on Chicago Landmarks in August of last year, Nash and Flesher first met in Nash's hometown of Topeka, Kansas in 1971. They opened the first Wax Trax! record store in Denver in 1975, and moved to a larger location in Denver three years later.
The Denver operation was later sold to two new owners, Dave Stidman and Duane Davis, and is still in business as Wax Trax Records — without the exclamation point. Meanwhile, Nash and Flesher moved to Chicago and opened the Lincoln Avenue Wax Trax! store on Oct. 1, 1978.
"Jim and Dannie, the owners, were fearless," said Julia Nash.
While it might seem like indie record stores like Wax Trax! surely must have been everywhere back in those days before Spotify or MP3's or even CDs, such was not the case. In the summary submitted to the city, Wax Trax! employee Larry Crandus was quoted:
"In the 1970s, you were pretty much limited to two types of stores when you wanted to buy records in Chicago: the overly fluorescent-lit, sterile supermarkets like Rose Records/Sounds Good, or (God-forbid) Sears/Montgomery Ward/E.J. Korvette. On the other end of the spectrum, there were the patchouli-soaked, black-light-poster-filled record store/head shops – great, if you hadn't gotten over 'Yellow Submarine.'"
Wax Trax! stocked both new and used records and cassette tapes and later CDs and videos. The store opened in the era of disco, but its original focus was punk, post-punk, rockabilly, glam, English R&B, power pop, psychedelic and psychopop, mod, European synth pop, and new wave — to name a few, as listed in order in the summary to the city.
Blues and reggae, 50s-era early rock 'n' roll, and the music of the artists and bands everyone knows — The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen — also had a home at Wax Trax! The store also sold bootleg records.
Clothing and magazines were later sold on the second story of the building, the summary to the city noted.
Soon enough, Nash and Flesher branched out from just running a record store and founded the Wax Trax! Records label. The first release on the label was a release by the Chicago punk group Strike Under in 1981, the summary noted.
Famed drag performer and John Waters movie star Divine had his first record release on the Wax Trax! Records label not long afterward, the summary pointed out. The label also worked with David Shelton, owner of the Medusa's all-ages dance club at 3257 N. Sheffield Ave., to put on shows for Wax Trax! label bands, the summary noted.
Famously, the Wax Trax! Records label was also the longtime home of a Chicago industrial metal band you may have heard of — Ministry.
The Wax Trax! store moved to 1657 N. Damen Ave. in Wicker Park in 1993. Jim Nash died in 1995, and the record store then closed the next year, the summary noted. Flesher died in 2010.
But this was not the end for Wax Trax! altogether. Mark Skillicorn married Julia Nash in 2010, and together, they resurrected the Wax Trax! label.
Now, they want to preserve its original home.
On Thursday, the Chicago Commission on Landmarks took a crucial vote to designate the building on Lincoln Avenue as a landmark.
"If it's a yes, we're going to go have a cocktail," Julia Nash said before the hearing.
At the hearing, fans of Wax Trax! said the Lincoln Avenue building was worth preserving — not only for its ornate façade, but for the underground music it helped shape and foster.
"A lot of people think Wax Trax! is just industrial or punk rock, but it had like an insane amount of rockabilly and soul," said Skillicorn.
Wax Trax! regulars already knew all that. They just had to make their case to the Commission on Chicago Landmarks — which they did, with the help of Preservation Chicago. That organization's executive director, Ward Miller, pointed out that he too used to go to Wax Trax!
Once the presentation was over, the motion to make the Lincoln Avenue building a landmark was passed unanimously.
The current owner of the building on Lincoln Avenue did not show up to the landmarks commission hearing Thursday. No one spoke against making the building a Chicago Landmark.
The next step is a final vote from the full City Council.
