Sinking in the quicksand of my thought

In 1997 my other half and I went to see David Bowie perform at Shepherd's Bush Empire on his Earthling tour. You can see the setlist here. This is a fairly small venue and we were standing down in the lower level. I remember having to wait quite a while before the show started. My better half is not very tall and so she stood on the steps at the back for a better view. The show started with Bowie coming out with an acoustic guitar to sing Quicksand from the Hunky Dory album.

On that tour he was not playing all the obvious hits as I think he had tired of that. It was still a great show. I quite liked the drum and bass style he was using then and the drummer was amazing.

We have a collection of tickets with a frame dedicated to Bowie. A few years ago we saw Mike Garson and others pay tribute to the man at the same venue.

Just over a week ago we saw Holy Holy that features Tony Visconti who worked a lot with Bowie. That day I listened to Hunky Dory, which is a damn fine album, and decided I needed to do a version of Quicksand. I played it at the pub the next day. A lot of people did not know the song, but then it is not one you often hear on the radio. You can tell he was reading a lot of esoteric stuff with mentions of various people and I assume there are other references in there.

It is not too hard to play, but it does change key after the first verse. I recorded a version at home last week to submit for @radioliquorice. For this I recorded the guitar and vocal separately and added some backing vocals on the chorus. The only effects are some compression and reverb.

I think this is a song I will perform again, but I have not yet mastered playing it from memory. That may take a while with all the words to learn. I often us chord sheets on a tablet at pub sessions, but I do have a fair few songs I can play without that, including Bowie's Space Oddity.

Rock on!