Lost in the Crowd, the first music album release from award-winning screenwriter and author Marc Cushman, is a Sixties-Seventies-style flashback!
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August 10, 2026. The album’s label identifies the artist as “Marc Cushman with WHATSTHEIRNAME” (pronounced What’s-Their-Name). The group name may draw a blank, but Cushman you may have heard about. He is an award-winning author of more than a dozen non-fiction books tracing pop culture through the 1960s and beyond. His three-volume set These Are the Voyages, documenting the making of the original Star Trek series, was celebrated with a Saturn Award from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror as “literary achievement of the year” in 2014. Likewise, his two-volume biography on the progressive rock group the Moody Blues was |
acknowledged with a journalism award. He is also a screenwriter of scores of movies and TV episodes, including scripts for a couple of the Star Trek series. And he’s worked as a director and producer. But Cushman has also written and produced songs, placing more than a dozen of his compositions in movies and on TV. In all, Cushman’s stash of original songs numbers close to 400, and most have never been shared with the public.
“With all the work I was juggling, I simply didn’t have time to push my music,” said Cushman, who is now doing just that. “One thing about the entertainment business is you have to be singularly focused on what you most want to succeed at. For decades, that was screenwriting, my primary bread and butter. Then I branched out into directing and producing. Writing songs was mostly a hobby.”
“Mostly” means that the part-time songwriter did place some of his compositions with a few Los Angeles-based rock groups in the late 1970s and early ’80s, with some released on record, as well as those that made it onto various soundtracks (most notably 2008’s Desperately Seeking Paul McCartney). Then, in 2025, Jacobs/Brown Media Group, which has published the majority of Cushman’s books, issued a single by Cushman and longtime musical collaborator Philip Franchini (the latter using the alias Dylan F. Phillips) entitled “Burnin’ On.” The song, with a subject concerning clashes between the Right and Left, the Hawks and Doves, young and old, haves and have-nots, and racial strife, was written in 1973, but is equally, or even more so, relevant today. Sample lyric: “Hatred steaming up / Doorways slamming shut / Colors burning bright / And all they do is fight / Speeches getting loud / The lunatics talk proud / As they collect your votes / And screw you through the night.”
“With all the work I was juggling, I simply didn’t have time to push my music,” said Cushman, who is now doing just that. “One thing about the entertainment business is you have to be singularly focused on what you most want to succeed at. For decades, that was screenwriting, my primary bread and butter. Then I branched out into directing and producing. Writing songs was mostly a hobby.”
“Mostly” means that the part-time songwriter did place some of his compositions with a few Los Angeles-based rock groups in the late 1970s and early ’80s, with some released on record, as well as those that made it onto various soundtracks (most notably 2008’s Desperately Seeking Paul McCartney). Then, in 2025, Jacobs/Brown Media Group, which has published the majority of Cushman’s books, issued a single by Cushman and longtime musical collaborator Philip Franchini (the latter using the alias Dylan F. Phillips) entitled “Burnin’ On.” The song, with a subject concerning clashes between the Right and Left, the Hawks and Doves, young and old, haves and have-nots, and racial strife, was written in 1973, but is equally, or even more so, relevant today. Sample lyric: “Hatred steaming up / Doorways slamming shut / Colors burning bright / And all they do is fight / Speeches getting loud / The lunatics talk proud / As they collect your votes / And screw you through the night.”
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Cushman was 18 when he wrote the song, having begun making demonstration recordings of his songs in 1972 when still in high school. “I started with a second-hand beat-up acoustic guitar, a borrowed electric guitar, some percussion instruments, and a standard cassette recorder,” he recalled. “Those recordings aren’t as crude as you might think. I added layers of sound to them over the years, first with a two-track record I purchased, then, by the mid-1980s, one with four tracks. Then, starting in the late 1970s, I was making recordings of my songs with various bands. It grew from there, involving different singers and musicians, mostly who were friends, until I had a mountain of master recordings. About two dozen of these songs were issued professionally in one way or another, and I figured that one day, when I wasn’t so busy, I’d get around to all the others. It
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Marc Cushman, pictured here in 1972, was an unusual 17-year-old, who was already writing TV scripts (for practice) and songs (for pleasure). His music, as gathered in this collection, is off-beat, interesting, and appealing.
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was on my bucket list. It just took longer than I expected.”
Cushman, circa mid-1980s.
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The bucket finally overflowed in 2026 when Cushman found an AI program to embellish the master recordings made by him and numerous musicians and singers over the years. “I’d upload the demo recording as the starting point. From there, I could add additional instruments and voices, and clean up the tracks.”
In less than six months, Cushman, an acknowledged workaholic, finalized the production and mastering of more than two dozen potential albums. “My songs were always grouped together in a series of self-made albums,” he said. “The first, from 1972, had the title Lost in the Crowd, because I was just one of tens of thousands of people wanting to break into the music business, or the screenwriting business. Or, for that matter, LIFE! I |
made copies, with artwork, and shared with family and close friends. So, they were ‘self-published’ on a small scale. And I’d do this with a new collection each year, spanning more than three decades.”
The artist’s name on each of these limited-edition albums was WHATSHISNAME (what’s-his-name), with “Marc Cushman” used only to identify the writer of the tracks. “I wasn’t looking to draw attention to myself as a performer, only as a writer,” Cushman said. “The main goal was to eventually sell some songs. WHATSHISNAME, which was me standing behind the curtain, was the guy singing and playing a couple guitars and beating on drums, or bongos, or tin cans.”
The artist’s name on each of these limited-edition albums was WHATSHISNAME (what’s-his-name), with “Marc Cushman” used only to identify the writer of the tracks. “I wasn’t looking to draw attention to myself as a performer, only as a writer,” Cushman said. “The main goal was to eventually sell some songs. WHATSHISNAME, which was me standing behind the curtain, was the guy singing and playing a couple guitars and beating on drums, or bongos, or tin cans.”
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With the new renditions of the songs, set for release by Jacobs/Brown Media Group this August, 2026, WHATSHISNAME has evolved into WHATSTHEIRNAME, featuring a broader range of singing voices and instrumental roles. “It’s my DNA, and people I’ve worked with over the years, put under a microscope and cleaned up by AI,” Cushman said. “It’s one big, harmonious family.”
The question for Jacobs/Brown was, in which order to release the albums, or whether or not to reimagine the collections by selecting various tracks and packaging them based on genre or theme? “Everyone seemed to have a different opinion,” Cushman said, “so I suggested the collections just be issued in the order that I wrote and originally recorded them. It’s a musical journey, so why not start at the beginning. There was of course a round of debates over this. One person said, ‘Do you really want to start with songs you wrote when you were 17?’ Another was concerned that some of the songs on the first collection might come across as tied to that specific period of time, meaning 1972, with things |
In 2026, Cushman utilized AI assist to clean and master the audio recordings which he had made dating as far back as 1972, which featured his performances and those of fellow musicians over the years. The four music videos for the album, including the song “Something New,” were created by inputting photos of Cushman from 1973 into an AI program, bringing the then 18-year-old singer/songwriter to cinematic life.
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such as the Vietnam war. My rebuttal was, first, war is war, Vietnam then, Iran now, and a few others in between; the message is the same. Second, inflation is still here; gas prices are still too high [which is addressed in the song ‘Gasoline’], racial tensions are still here, the population explosion is still exploding, and the many problems faced in crowded cities are still being faced. Apathy among the young, and drug use, and depression, and self-doubt, and social conflict are still with us. In each case, more so than when I first wrote the songs. So, I didn’t see them as dated.”
Perhaps not dated, but certainly serious, even to the point of risking being heard as sounding a bit bleak to anyone expecting happy, nostalgic songs about the 1960s and ’70s.
“I like happy songs. And love songs. And I’d write more than my share of both later on. But not when I was finishing up high school. I was a serious teen – morbidly serious, perhaps – with a world full of worries on my mind. But with a sense of humor about it, too. And I gravitated to listening to music of that type – Paul Simon, John Lennon, Dylan, the Moody Blues. You can’t exactly call Simon’s ‘Sounds of Silence’ or ‘I Am a Rock’ or ‘A Hazy Shade of Winter’ upbeat songs. Or Lennon’s ‘Working Class Hero’ or ‘Cold Turkey’ or ‘Revolution’ frivolous fare. I may have still loved ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ but I was more likely to try to write something along the lines of ‘A Day in the Life’ when I was getting started. Don’t pigeonhole me by it; it was just a starting point.”
The themes of the album’s songs on Lost in the Crowd certainly do not indicate a teenager of 17. Do the songs sound dated, in respect to their musical styling? In some ways, they may, because the material on this first album was intentionally produced to be reminiscent of the popular music styles of that time. There are, however, subtle modern updates, including a modern indie folk/rock sound that mixes well with the more traditional folk of the 1960s. A dash of alternative rock and garage rock also blends easily with the psychedelic rock sounds of the ’60s.
In many ways, Lost in the Crowd plays as a concept album, not only because there are traces of the 1960s and early ’70s in the various musical styles, but because of recurring themes in some of the songs, which tie together by the end. In other ways, listening to Lost in the Crowd might remind you of the time when Top 40 radio presented playlists that contained a full spectrum of varied tastes, featuring artists as diverse as the Beatles, Elvis, Johnny Cash, the Doors, Deep Purple, Marvin Gaye, and the Carpenters, all on the same station. You will get a reflection of that musical diversity with this collection, which can be equated to tuning in a radio station from an alternate/parallel universe, circa late 1960s and early ’70s America. That may make Lost in the Crowd a bad fit for some in this age of narrowing musical tastes, where people choose to listen to only one specific genre and mainstream radio caters to such tastes. But for anyone who remembers what Top 40 and FM radio sounded like 40 and even 50 years ago, and the serious themes of the deeper album cuts, hearing Lost in the Crowd will be like visiting with an old friend.
– Patti Winter, Jacobs/Brown Media Group.
Perhaps not dated, but certainly serious, even to the point of risking being heard as sounding a bit bleak to anyone expecting happy, nostalgic songs about the 1960s and ’70s.
“I like happy songs. And love songs. And I’d write more than my share of both later on. But not when I was finishing up high school. I was a serious teen – morbidly serious, perhaps – with a world full of worries on my mind. But with a sense of humor about it, too. And I gravitated to listening to music of that type – Paul Simon, John Lennon, Dylan, the Moody Blues. You can’t exactly call Simon’s ‘Sounds of Silence’ or ‘I Am a Rock’ or ‘A Hazy Shade of Winter’ upbeat songs. Or Lennon’s ‘Working Class Hero’ or ‘Cold Turkey’ or ‘Revolution’ frivolous fare. I may have still loved ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand,’ but I was more likely to try to write something along the lines of ‘A Day in the Life’ when I was getting started. Don’t pigeonhole me by it; it was just a starting point.”
The themes of the album’s songs on Lost in the Crowd certainly do not indicate a teenager of 17. Do the songs sound dated, in respect to their musical styling? In some ways, they may, because the material on this first album was intentionally produced to be reminiscent of the popular music styles of that time. There are, however, subtle modern updates, including a modern indie folk/rock sound that mixes well with the more traditional folk of the 1960s. A dash of alternative rock and garage rock also blends easily with the psychedelic rock sounds of the ’60s.
In many ways, Lost in the Crowd plays as a concept album, not only because there are traces of the 1960s and early ’70s in the various musical styles, but because of recurring themes in some of the songs, which tie together by the end. In other ways, listening to Lost in the Crowd might remind you of the time when Top 40 radio presented playlists that contained a full spectrum of varied tastes, featuring artists as diverse as the Beatles, Elvis, Johnny Cash, the Doors, Deep Purple, Marvin Gaye, and the Carpenters, all on the same station. You will get a reflection of that musical diversity with this collection, which can be equated to tuning in a radio station from an alternate/parallel universe, circa late 1960s and early ’70s America. That may make Lost in the Crowd a bad fit for some in this age of narrowing musical tastes, where people choose to listen to only one specific genre and mainstream radio caters to such tastes. But for anyone who remembers what Top 40 and FM radio sounded like 40 and even 50 years ago, and the serious themes of the deeper album cuts, hearing Lost in the Crowd will be like visiting with an old friend.
– Patti Winter, Jacobs/Brown Media Group.
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