Bowie was both busy and not so busy in 1978. In terms of new material it was a dry year separating Heroes (1977) and Lodger (1979), two of the three brilliant Berlin albums. On the other hand, in 1978 he released Stage, a successful attempt to give the fans a better live album than 1974’s David Live!

He also released one of the two oddballs in the Bowie discography: David Bowie Narrates Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf (The other: David Bowie in Bertolt Brecht’s Baal). So what’s my point here?

My point is that this is a really weird promo. Normally a promo-only release references back to the album that the cuts came from: “From the upcoming album Stage” or something like that. Not in this case.

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And the cover photo is from the same session as  the previously mentioned Peter and the Wolf album. Of course, it’s also the same session as the ChangesOneBowie sleeve from a couple of years earlier, so maybe that means nothing more than RCA always got their money out of a photo shoot.

And why white vinyl? From a collector’s point of view, colored vinyl is always cool, but what was the gimmick here? I don’t know.

I’ve read one suggestion that this promo was part of a marketing campaign that was canceled. That seems like a reasonable possibility. Another possibility is that it was RCA’s attempt to keep Bowie in the minds of radio programmers and record retailers until the next studio album was ready.

I really can’t say for certain, but I know that it’s one of my favorite additions to my stacks. Expect to pay 25-50 dollars, though I’ve seen them go for much more and much less. Happy hunting.