Irwin Chusid

Irwin Chusid (born April 22, 1951 in Newark, New Jersey) is a journalist, music historian, radio personality, record producer, and self-described "landmark preservationist".

His stated mission has been to "find things on the scrapheap of history that I know don't belong there and salvage them."

Those "things" have included such previously overlooked but now-celebrated icons as composer/bandleader/electronic music pioneer Raymond Scott, Space Age Pop avatar Esquivel, illustrator/fine artist Jim Flora, various outsider musicians (including William "Shooby" Taylor, a.k.a. "The Human Horn"), and The Langley Schools Music Project.

Chusid calls himself "a connoisseur of marginalia," while admitting he's "a terrible barometer of popular taste."

Chusid oversees the catalog of the late Afrofuturist artist/composer/bandleader Sun Ra and administers Ra's music rights on behalf of the artist's heirs.

His book, Sun Ra: Art on Saturn — The Album Cover Art of Sun Ra's Saturn Label, compiled with Chris Reisman, was published by Fantagraphics in November 2022.

His journalism has appeared in Mojo, The New York Times, Film Comment, Mix magazine, New York Press, Pulse! and other publications.

In 2021 he authored a biography of 19th century baseball legend Joe Start for the Society for American Baseball Research's BioProject.

Prior to his involvement at WFMU, he worked briefly at WPKN radio from 1969-1971 while an undergrad at the University of Bridgeport (which he left after two years); in 1977, while living in New Orleans, he hosted a weekly program on WTUL.

In the late 1970s, Chusid was one of the first DJs to regularly air recordings of Jandek, The Shaggs, Lucia Pamela, and R. Stevie Moore on the radio.

Since 1975 Chusid has been a DJ on free-form radio station WFMU, where he hosts an unpredictable and idiosyncratic weekly program whose content he calls "genre-surfing tokenism".

In the early 1980s he programmed a weekly segment entitled The Atrocious Music Hour, which featured recordings from such non-musical celebrities as William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.

This subgenre was eventually chronicled by Rhino Records on their Golden Throats series of albums, for which Chusid authored liner notes.

These compilations contributed to Shatner's revived celebrity, albeit with overtones of self-parody.

In 1988, he served as a comedy writer for author/humorist Tom Bodett's syndicated radio series, The End of the Road.

Chusid is credited with the rediscovery and popularization of the "Space Age Bachelor Pad" music of Juan García Esquivel, which helped spark the 1990s resurgence of vintage Exotica and lounge music.

He compiled the first CD reissues of Esquivel and Raymond Scott, and manages the musical estates of both deceased composers/bandleaders.

He has produced landmark reissues by The Shaggs, Sun Ra, Wendy and Bonnie, Judson Fountain, Lucia Pamela, and Alabama folk-art ensemble The Clouds, while penning liner notes for dozens of CD and LP releases on a multitude of labels.

Chusid has lived in Hoboken, New Jersey, since 1992.

He describes his political views as "leaning libertarian".

Between 1997 and 2002 Chusid was the co-host (with Michelle Boulé) of the Incorrect Music Hour on WFMU.

In 1997 Chusid co-produced (with Edie Adams and Josh Mills) the Ernie Kovacs Record Collection (Varese-Sarabande), a compilation of songs and themes used by the legendary TV comedian in his programs during the 1950s and early 1960s.

The package was designed by noted illustrator Chris Ware.

In 2000, Chusid discovered two LPs of privately pressed western Canadian schoolchildren recordings made in 1976–77 by music teacher Hans Fenger.

After much legwork and ten label rejections, Chusid licensed the project to Netherlands-based Basta Audio-Visuals and (for North America) Hoboken-based Bar/None Records, who in October 2001 released the recordings on a CD entitled The Langley Schools Music Project.

Within one week of its release, the album went to #1 on Amazon.com.

The popularity of that CD led to a VH1 documentary in 2002, which sent the CD back to #2 on Amazon.com.

In 2002, Chusid produced the sole album by the New York-based septet The Raymond Scott Orchestrette (a band he formed in 1999).

Jack Black's 2003 hit film School of Rock was admittedly inspired by the Langley CD.

In 2004 he curated Interesting Results: Music by a Committee of One for UK's Sonic Arts Network, a CD-publication of DIY music with cut-out figures of the featured artists.

From 2005 to 2007 he programmed vintage Calypso, Soca, Goombay, and Mento on a one-hour weekly program entitled Muriel's Treasure.

In 2005, the story rights to the project were acquired by an undisclosed Hollywood film writer/director, who hopes to bring the story to the big screen.

In a dismissive review of the album, former Village Voice music critic Robert Christgau referred to Chusid as "a tedious ideologue with a hustle."

That same year he produced the first solo sessions of former Suddenly, Tammy! singer/songwriter Beth Sorrentino, released in 2006 as Nine Songs, One Story.

In 2010 Chusid compiled for WFMU Don't Mess With the Power Child, the first collection of late 1980s recordings by an uninhibited, hyperactive 10-year-old Alabama girl named Amanda (Whitt).

These recordings aired frequently on WFMU and subsequently achieved widespread notoriety via the web.

In 2011, he co-conceived and coordinated Sorrentino's album Would You Like To Go: A Curt Boettcher Songbook, a collection of reinterpretations of songs written by and/or associated with sunshine pop progenitor Curt Boettcher.

A follow-up, Let's Get Plastered and Raid Circus World, was compiled for WFMU in 2011.

(The album, produced by Sean Slade, was released in April 2013 on the Basta label. Chusid was credited as "Solicitor and Overseer.") In 2013, he undertook administration of Boettcher's publishing on behalf of the late songwriter's son, Varek Boettcher.

He produced Raymond Scott Rewired, an album of Scott remixes by The Bran Flakes, The Evolution Control Committee, and Go Home Productions, which was released in February 2014 on the Basta label.