Having been a label for over a decade now, we decided that it was finally time to gather a label history. Each one of the artists’ albums and compilations that we put out has an amazing story. These are albums that we want to put, not that we are obligated to put out. So we have a pretty strong attachment to each of them. Everyone in the office could probably sing every lyric to each of our albums — we still listen to, and love all of them.

What you have here is an interview with David Byrne that took place in March of 1998 on the Europe leg of his Feelings Tour. Each question was also asked of Yale Evelev, label president, so we could get a complete perspective on each album and artist.


Timeline

PART 1

Yale: In 1986 my girlfriend and I went to India. It was my second time and her first. Some friends of ours received a grant to study painting in India for six months and had come back with a cassette of some really cool Indian film music that I imagined had been made by some young guy in a basement studio with some samplers.

They bought the tape in Mysore and it was a very hand done cover that said Vijaya Anand Dance Raja Dance. I had heard quite a bit of “filmi,” but this music was different. Much more current-sounding, with the wonderful kitsch amalgamations of different musics, including electronic dance music.

I knew that Mysore, being a relatively small town, would probably not be where the cosmopolitan Vijaya Anand would live. He probably lived in the nearby Bangalore, known the Silicon Valley of India, the center of all things high-tech. So we went to Bangalore.

I went into the first cassette shop I found near where we were staying and asked the folks behind the counter if they knew where I could find the person who made this tape (holding up tape). I know it sounds like a ridiculous way to go about things but I had a label called Icon that had done a few non-Western records, and found that often communities of music-related people are rather small and everyone knows one another.

Anyway they said “Oh, Dance Raja Dance, that was a very good movie.” (My first glimpse that I was not going to be dealing with some guy in a basement.) “Why don’t you go down to the building next to the movie theater and ask them.”

OK, I can see where this is going. After walking around in circles in “the building next to the movie theater,” I decided to ask at the movie theater box office (I know, I know, but it isn’t New York here, you know.) “Oh, Dance Raja Dance,” that was a very good film, played here for many weeks.” Do you know Vijaya Anand? “Oh yes, very good music director.” Any idea where I can find him? “No.”

“Well, you could try this address.”

The search continues. After walking through a neighborhood of film promotion and distribution offices with people painting those huge Indian film billboards on the street, I come to an office of what is obviously the film’s distributor. Lots of rusting film cans and a couple of guys bent over very large ledger books making inscriptions.

Um, do you know where I can find film composer Vijaya Anand? “What are you crazy, why would we know about where a film composer is?” They look at me like I’m crazy. Does he ever come by here? “OK look, why don’t you go over to the South Indian Film Board Chamber of Congress and ask them?”

More walking in the Indian afternoon heat. And there it is, the South Indian Film Board Chamber of Congress. Why didn’t someone mention this in the first place? Well, let’s not speak so soon. Hello, excuse me, I am looking for a film composer named Vijaya Anand. “Oh sure we know him, do you want his address?”

Wow. So easy. Well, not yet. It turns out he lives in Madras, clear across the country. Though he does music for Kanada language films shown in the state of Karnatica, he speaks and lives in the Tamil state of Tamil Nadu. So I guess I’ll have to meet up with him on another trip.


Vijaya Anand Part 2

Yale: It’s now three years later, 1989, and I have written Vijaya at the address The South Indian Film Board Chamber of Congress had given me. I didn’t expect an answer and didn’t get one. A few years earlier, I had done a record of an Indonesian music called jaipong with the singer Idjah Hadidjah. I had written to her Indonesian producer, Gugum Gumbira, and then showed up on his doorstep months later. The letter had meant a lot to him, as the Indonesian jaipong craze was waning and he was at a turning point in his life. To have some foreigner interested in his work up to that point turned out to be an invigorating situation for him.

But nothing is that easy in India.

My girlfriend Leslie and I showed up in Madras and gave Vijaya a call. The next day Vijaya and a whole retinue show up at our hotel with flower bouquets for both of us. Flowers! In my five trips to India I had never seen flowers (for non-religious purposes) for sale, where did he get those? Anyway, here the complications begin. Vijaya, though he has not yet made this apparent, does not speak English. Actually he does speak it, but doesn’t feel he speaks it well enough to talk to us. So his cousin, John, does most of the talking.

John tells us he will return on the next day and we will set about licensing the various tracks from someone. Nobody really seems to know who that will be yet.

I’ll shorten what would be a long-winded explanation of a week of futile days sitting a small hotel room waiting with cousin John calling every morning to say everything is worked out and he would be right over. And waiting in this hotel room all day until John would call again at five in the evening and say everything had been worked out but it was too late, and he would be over first thing the next morning. Needless to say I went nuts, fell on the floor screaming, and finally gave up the whole idea.

Leslie and I instead went to the beach (about 50 miles down the coast; in India it’s a three hour drive.) Of course we got to the beach and the women at the hotel had an urgent message from cousin John. I called, and of course he had it all worked out and I should just come back to Madras.

Yeah right.

A couple of days later I go back and meet cousin John. He says he has set up a meeting with a big South Indian film producer and if I tell him what a big fan I am of his films we’ll be able to get the rights to the music. Ok, I’m game.

We meet the guy, sitting behind a large desk and I do my best Dustin Hoffman imitation which seems to work. But the end result is he really only has the films with the music in them, no separate tapes, so I give up. We have a nice vacation in South India.