Thanks for all the comments and suggestions. David Byrne is nothing if not a total eccentric, so I'm not surprised by a lot of what I'm hearing. I'll definitely have to check this book out at some point, but I'm not rushing out to get it.
By the way, his site has a live stream that changes monthly. Often there's a theme and a lot of the music is by artists from his label or artists he's toured with. Its usually a pretty interesting listen.