It goes without saying that staring at a prospective employer for 60 minutes is a foolproof plan for not landing a job. Unless said boss is David Byrne; in that case, awkward silences and nervous tics are par for the course.
«At my ‘interview,’ neither of us said more than four or five sentences for an hour,» explains Yale Evelev, Luaka Bop’s co-owner and main A&R man. «I kept thinking, ‘Shouldn’t he be asking questions?’ I remember the last thing David said was, ‘I have to do my laundry now because I just got off tour.’ The only thing that was clear to me in the end was, ‘What the hell just happened?'»
And so began the (strangely) beautiful relationship that’s sustained Luaka Bop for the past 19 years. (Twenty-one if you count the time Byrne spent without a staff.) A lot has changed since 1990, though. That’d be the year Evelev left his own label–the eight-year-old Icon Records (sample release: The Big Gundown — John Zorn Plays the Music of Ennio Morricone)–and a programming post at the Brooklyn Academy of Music to focus on one of the industry’s most visionary boutique imprints.
Theoretically speaking, the pairing was perfect: Warner Bros. pressed Byrne’s solo projects, and in turn, provided an outlet for whatever he and Evelev deemed cool. The twist being just how personal such a proposition could be. After all, Luaka Bop was envisioned as a mass-produced extension of the cassettes Byrne often dubbed for friends, beginning with 1989’s immensely popular–and in many ways, label-defining–Beleza Tropical compilation. A learn-as-you-go-along proposition from the start, it clearly valued quality control over chasing trends.
«When we were connected to Warner Bros., they expected pop sales numbers,» says Evelev. «I remember one of the marketing people saying, ‘Yale, we want you to stop doing these compilations,’ during my first few months. And I go, ‘We just sold 350,000 copies of Beleza Tropical. Why would you want us to stop this?’ ‘Because we think you can do better. We think you should sign bands.’ What they really wanted, though, was for us to sign bands like the Talking Heads.»
And that’s where Luaka Bop’s brain trust begged to differ. While Byrne gladly signed their first original artist (Tom Zé) in 1992, Warner Bros. wasn’t exactly thrilled about his bizarre compositions and Beefheart-caliber brilliance. To give you an idea of Zé’s welcome eccentricities, the Tropicália icon was about to quit the business and return to his gas attendant job in Bahia when Luaka Bop came calling.
The 180’s kept coming in the years since, too, as Luaka Bop’s catalog chipped away at the tunnel vision theory of «David Byrne’s world music label.» That includes the following critical favorites: quirky French chanteuse twists on post-punk classics (Nouvelle Vague), a drifter in the dark with Tom Waits-ian tendencies (Jim White), a disco-funk band hell bent for the dancefloor (Los Amigos Invisbles), and a former acapella outfit stepped in a heady mix of R&B, hip-hop and Afro-pop (Zap Mama). Many of which witnessed Luaka Bop during its many incarnations, from its long-running Warner partnership to its stints with Virgin and V2. (The label finally became its own independent entity when V2 imploded in 2007.)
«We have always been admirers of any outlets that are doing something different, and particularly dig the Luaka Bop pressings of Os Mutantes, Los Amigos and Shuggie Otis,» says Cornershop frontman Tjinder Singh, who released his own seminal When I was Born For the 7th Time LP through the label. &ldqu
