Irwin Chusid - Projects

Projects

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 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. He is currently producing an album of Raymond Scott remixes by The Bran Flakes, The Evolution Control Committee, and Go Home Productions, scheduled for 2013 release on the Basta label. 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 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."

In 2002, Chusid produced the sole album by the New York based septet The Raymond Scott Orchestrette (a band he formed in 1999). 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 2011, he served as Executive Producer for Sorrentino's album Would You Like To Go?, a collection of reinterpretations of songs written by and/or associated with sunshine pop progenitor Curt Boettcher. (The album, produced by Sean Slade, is scheduled for 2013 release on the Basta label.)

In 2010 Chusid compiled Don't Mess With the Power Child, the first non-commercial 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. A follow-up, Let's Get Plastered and Raid Circus World, was compiled for WFMU in 2011.

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. A fourth book focusing on Flora's illustrated album covers and music ephemera for Columbia and RCA Victor Records is scheduled for publication in Spring 2013.

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.