Ienner at 36 became the label's youngest president when he took over last April. He was at his new job for less than 48 hours when he heard the Poi Dog tape and decided to make the band his cause celebre. ``I must have had 40 tapes that weekend,'' Ienner said. ``All of the sudden this thing came on and I was astounded by it.'' He especially liked the song ``Living With the Dreaming Body,'' which begins with a lilting tin whistle, and listened to it about 100 times. He later mastered the tin whistle so he could play the intro himself. After checking around, he found Columbia was ``either the 11th or 12th company interested in the band. That really got my juices going. ``Basically we told them we wanted them, and they said they don't want to be with Columbia,'' Ienner said. ``(The band thought), `it's too corporate, it's too monolithic, it's too bureaucratic.''' But when Ienner met Poi Dog's manager, Mike Stewart, they n of America. In 1975, an infamously slow time for the recording industry, earnings totaled $2.37 billion, the RIAA said. In 1978, punk and new wave signaled a revival and the figure jumped to $4.13 billion. In 1988, $6.25 billion was earned. ``We needed to change direction,'' Ienner said. ``There was nothing, just retreading the superstars, just one after another after another.'' Poi Dog would be the Columbia's ``signature band,'' Ienner said, to show ``our musical sensitivity.'' It would also help establish a division within Columbia that would cater to a huge audience carved out in large part by college radio stations looking for an alternative to Top 40 music. Those involved refuse to discuss the deal's financial side. But many in the industry say the band was signed for more than $200,000 for the first album. A new pop band can fetch anywhere from $75,000 to $350,000 for its first record contract, industry officals say. The sum, however, doesn't just pile into the musician's pockets. Much of it is reinvested to pay for the recording costs for the first album. The ballpark figures for recording an album go from about $200,000 to $400,000, said Harold Vogel, an entertainment industry analyst with Merrill Lynch & Co. Another hunk goes to practical expenses such as paying off band members' debts. And still another chunk is invested in upgrading the band's equipment and buying new instruments. The rest goes to lifestyle expenses to maintain the band while they are recording and keep them going until they get to record number two, which brings another windfall. Although Orrall is tight-lipped about how much Poi Dog got, he does give a general breakdown for how it was used: ``What we essentially are doing with our advance is just putting it in an account and paying everyone in the band $1,000 a month so ... everyone can quit their jobs, pay their rent, get their guitar strings and buy their beer,'' he said. To celebrate the contract, Poi Dog Pondering played a surprise set at Columbia's offices. They set up in an elevator and when the doors opened, they began to play. People slowly drifted from their offices into the halls. ``The sound traveled down the elevator banks and people were coming up the stairwells from all the floors,'' said Mary Ellen Cataneo, a Columbia publicist. ``Literally, people had tears in their eyes,'' Ienner said. ``People were all standing there with tears in their eyes.'' It was the first time in 20 years a musician had played live at Columbia's offices. The guy who did it was also a new artist _ a young piano player by the name of Billy Joel.
