Andy Zax
Quick Facts
Biography
Andy Zax (born 1965) is an American music historian and producer of music reissues by Talking Heads, Rod Stewart, Echo & the Bunnymen, Television, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Judee Sill, John Cale, Nico, The Neon Philharmonic, Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, The Sisters of Mercy, David Axelrod and Lee Hazlewood, among others. He also appeared on the Comedy Central game show Beat the Geeks as the Music Geek.
In 2009, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival, Zax produced the boxed set Woodstock: 40 Years On: Back to Yasgur's Farm, for which he was nominated for a Grammy for Best Historical Album. Zax reconstructed all three days of the Woodstock audio from the original multi-track tapes. By doing so, he was able to establish a definitive setlist for the festival, ending decades of speculation about what order artists had played in and what material they played.
Zax was a recurring panelist on the live stage revival of What's My Line? in Los Angeles and New York City from 2004 to 2008. He was also a contestant on the very first episode of the Fox game show Greed on November 4, 1999. When asked what he'd do with the top prize if he were to win, he replied that he'd use it to finish his novel.
From October 2006 until May 2007, he hosted a weekly radio program, Archives of Oblivion, described as "a treasure hunt through the scrapheap of mid-20th Century pop-culture ephemera", showcasing his notoriously eccentric record collection.
On January 19, 2008, he married actress Lisa Jane Persky in Beverly Hills.