Put That Record On! - David Bowie's "Outside"

Every other Sunday, resident artist Josh Blumenthal and music guru Nick Foreman will be hosting music listening parties in the 'Elmwood Room' at Paris In Plantsville Art Gallery.

The Concept:

We'll put on a record (CD, Tape, Vinyl, 8-Track, etc.), listen to it in it's entirety and then discuss both the record and the artist. There will be refreshments, further discussion, and music from the featured artist's catalog.

[There will be alcoholic beverages and food available, however we will NOT serve them until after the listening/discussion. And please no outside alcohol.]

The Album:

David Bowie - 1. Outside 1995 (Arista/BMG)

From Wiki -

Outside is a concept album first released 26 September 1995 by David Bowie on Virgin Records, and this "risky" but successful album was Bowie's "highly anticipated" reunion with Brian Eno, whom Bowie had worked with most famously on his Berlin Trilogy. Subtitled "the Ritual Art-Murder of Baby Grace Blue: A non-linear Gothic Drama Hyper-Cycle," Outside centers around the characters of a dystopian world on the eve of the 21st century. The album put Bowie back into the mainstream scene of rock music with its singles "The Hearts Filthy Lesson", "Strangers When We Meet", and "Hallo Spaceboy" (notably remixed by the Pet Shop Boys).

The liner notes feature a short story by Bowie, the Diary of Nathan Adler, which outlines a somewhat dystopian version of the year 1999 in which the government, through its arts commission, had created a new bureau to investigate the phenomenon of Art Crime. In this future, murder and mutilation of bodies had become a new underground art craze. The main character, Nathan Adler, was in the business of deciding what of this was legally acceptable as art and what was, in a word, trash. The album is filled with references to characters and their lives as he investigates the complicated events leading up to the murder of a fourteen-year-old girl. One is meant to assume that Bowie's character, Nathan Adler, works for the British government due to several references to the cities of London and Oxford, but in the liner notes these are revealed to be, at least in some cases, London, Ontario and Oxford, New Jersey, indicating that the entire story may take place in North America—or, indeed, that the distinction between the two places has become blurred and indistinguishable.

 

For more info please see the Facebook Event Page for Put That Record On!