David Bowie and Nine Inch Nails. The suggestion of this pairing six years ago would have been thought quite absurd. The old guy who sings nice songs about China girls and red shoes with the human angst-filled libido couldn't make for an odder coupling. So why then, has this been one of the most publicized, non-festival tours of the year?
When first hearing of the "Outside" tour, my initial reaction, like many others, was utter disbelief. Then after a few minutes of pondering this completely different, but remarkably similar pairing, I began to realize the sense of it all. Both artists, and each is closer to an artist than a musician, were leaders in their own way. Notice I said leaders and not originators for I will not give the credit to either man for discovering their craft, but rather for widening its audience and bringing it to the mainstream. Simply put, Bowie was to glam as Trent was to industrial.
Driving into the parking lot of NJ's Meadowlands offered up a disturbingly accurate cross section of the patrons of tonight's techno-industrial fest. On the left there were the Bowie fans, hoping see what could be for the last time, the man they once knew as Ziggy Stardust. On the right, the Nine Inch Nails fans, mostly frat boys (and girls) and those destined to be.
Prick opened the show precisely at 7:30, a sure sign that this was a well structured event, to a half-filled arena of disinterested concert-goers. Although they played well, impressing me with their raw demure, they didn't seem to gel with the rest of the show. Taken out of context, if they played CBGB's, Prick would have put on one hell of a show. Here they were simply out classed and overlooked, acting as if it was a club show by shouting constant mic checks and tuning their guitars between songs. They simply didn't fit, and if it doesn't fit...
A surprisingly short intermission followed their set, applause coming only form those paying attention to the unknown appetizer. With the house lights still on, Nine Inch Nails casually walked on stage and immediately brought the seated crowd to its feet and transformed the Meadowlands dubbed "PIT" into a turbulent sea of white-faced, black-lipsticked mayhem by opening with an electrically charged "Terrible Lies."
Trent overtook the stage, leather-clad, strutting back and forth with a new found confidence. NIN knows how to work the stadium crowd, now possessing post-Woodstock '94 experience. And Trent is definitely not over his wet fixation. Every few songs, he would crawl to his bottle of water, dump it on his head, then throw it into the crowd, probably hitting some unsuspecting mosher in the head.
Their set list consisted of mainly songs off The Downward Spiral, but surprisingly included rarer songs off Pretty Hate Machine and Broken. When they played a remixed version of "Closer," the first single off The Downward Spiral, the crowd got completely perplexed, as if they didn't know what a remix was. A pit, which I assumed would be entirely out of hand, was now filled with dumbfounded kids in black asking themselves, "Is this it?"
After a lengthy Nine Inch Nails set, the figure of a gaunt man was shown silhouetted behind the curtain, hands folded, staring at Trent with one eye, and the crowd with the other. As David Bowie came closer to view, he was welcomed by an non-receptive smathering of applause. When Bowie and Trent sang their duets of Bowie's "Scary Monsters" and NIN's "Hurt," it became apparent how similar these two artists are by the emotion underlying each voice.
As Trent left the stage, and his band was replaced by Bowie's, David broke into the opening track off his latest album, Outside, without any preset chatter. He proceeded to play each song off Outside in uninterupted succession. Bowie had completely adapted his new sound into that which blended well with the vibe Nine Inch Nails has left us with.
Again the crowd was puzzled as to how to react. Music that could be labeled "Industrial" was coming out of the speakers, but it was David Bowie leading the noise. What most couldn't understand is that this is Bowie's new toy. He found a great potential for musical experimentation hidden in techno-based music. Like an artist unveiling a painting for the first time, this is what Bowie had come to the altar with, and we were to be subjected to it.
Although most of the crowd didn't think so (at the end of the show less than half of the crowd remained), Bowie performed remarkably. He knew he was committing "commercial suicide." In a recent interview with USA Today, he described how to accomplish this dangerous task, "You play songs from an album that hasn't been released yet, and compliment it with obscure songs from the past that you've never done on stage."
Bowie took us on a journey that night. Each song, sung from the perspective of each character in The Diary of Nathan Adler, the non-linear gothic drama on which Outside is based, brought with it it's own angle on emotion and point of view. Ranging from melodic ambiance to techno-industrial, the show volleyed between smoke enshrouded dancing colors and screaming strobe lights, making it an experience of sight as well as sound.
Granted, many of the fans left disappointed, feeling that they were short-changed on a "David Bowie Concert" because he neglected to play a ny of his mass market favorites. What people didn't realize was that this was not a rock concert but something closer to performance art. Outside is a story-telling album and Bowie told us the story of an art detective and the hunt for an art killer.
If more people would have stopped hoping to hear "Ziggy Stardust" and "Let's Dance," and instead ingested the show for what it was, David Bowie would have walked away that evening amidst overwhelming applause instead of exiting quietly and leaving us without an encore. David Bowie is by no means over, he is an artist and will continue to create art, even if this unappreciative exhibit may prove to be his final one.
