Irwin Chusid (born 22 April 1951, Newark, New Jersey) is a journalist, music historian, radio personality and self-described "landmark preservationist." His stated mission[1] 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, and The Langley Schools Music Project.
Since 1975, Chusid has been a DJ on free-form radio station WFMU, where he continues to host an unpredictable and idiosyncratic weekly program. Prior to that, he worked briefly at WPKN radio while a student at the University of Bridgeport. In 1988, he served as a comedy writer for author/humorist Tom Bodett's syndicated radio series, The End of the Road.
His journalism has appeared in Mojo, The New York Times, Film Comment, Mix Magazine, New York Press, Pulse and other publications.
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. 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 sub-genre 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.
Between 1997-2002 Chusid was the co-host (with Michelle Boulé) of the Incorrect Music Hour on WFMU. From 2005 to 2007 he programed 72 hours of vintage Calypso, Soca and Mento on a feature entitled Muriel's Treasure.
In 2004 Chusid curated Interesting Results for UK's Sonic Arts Network, a CD-publication of DIY music with cut-out figures of the featured artists.
He has lived in Hoboken, New Jersey since 1992.
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Chusid is credited with the rediscovery and popularization of the "space age bachelor pad" music of Juan García Esquivel, which helped spark the 1990s retro resurgence of 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 CD reissues by The Shaggs, Wendy and Bonnie, Judson Fountain, and Lucia Pamela, while penning liner notes for dozens of releases on a multitude of labels.
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. Jack Black's 2003 hit film School of Rock was admittedly inspired [2] by the Langley CD. 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." [3]
In 2002, Chusid produced an album by the New York based septet The Raymond Scott Orchestrette. That same year he produced the first solo sessions of former Suddenly, Tammy! singer/songwriter Beth Sorrentino.
Chusid chronicled the forgotten work of innovative record cover artist/commercial illustrator Jim Flora (1914-1998) in his colorful 180-page trade paperback, The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora (Fantagraphics, 2004). A follow-up, The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora, co-authored with (former KFAI radio host) Barbara Economon, was published by Fantagraphics in February 2007. The latter book unveiled Flora's bizarre and rarely seen paintings, woodcuts, sketches, and early works. A third anthology, The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora, was published in July 2009.
In May 2009, Chusid (and printmaker Barbara Economon) teamed up with Drew Friedman to produce an exclusive line of limited edition fine art prints of the noted illustrator's works at DrewFriedman.net.
In a 1996 Pulse magazine article, Chusid coined the term "outsider music", which he defines as "crackpot and visionary music, where all trails lead essentially one place: over the edge." Chusid has drawn a distinction—too often lost on deadline-beset journalists—between the terms "incorrect music" (as used on his WFMU radio program) and "outsider music," which he insists are not synonymous and overlap only slightly. Chusid has explained that Incorrect Music was a radio concept, which included all manner of musical "wrongness," often by people who should have known better, or whose sincerity was questionable. Outsider musicians, on the other hand, he defines as "artists who are often termed 'bad' or 'inept' by listeners who judge them by the standards of mainstream popular music. Yet despite dodgy rhythms and a lack of conventional tunefulness, these often self-taught artists radiate an abundance of earnestness and passion. Most importantly, they betray an absence of pretense. And they're worth listening to, often outmatching all contenders for inventiveness and originality."
His book Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music (2000), published by A Cappella Books, covered musical oddballs and obscure visionaries. Reviewing this testament to twisted tunesmiths, Publishers Weekly commented:
B.J. Snowden, Shooby Taylor ("The Human Horn"), Wesley Willis, and other musicians profiled in the book can be heard on two CDs produced and annotated by Chusid. Bill Meyer reviewed the first CD: