Don’t Sit Down is a 40 second skit of a track on Bowie’s second album. It appears immediately after Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed, and indeed, feels a little like an off-cut of that song. Its sounds like the band mucking around over an early version of the back track. As Chris O’Leary writes, this was ‘part of the deliberate informality of late Sixties albums, many of which kept sounds that would have gotten an engineer reprimanded in 1964. See Jimi Hendrix coughing at the start of “Rainy Day, Dream Away.” Bob Dylan asking whether the tape’s rolling on Nashville Skyline or the Beatles’ “White Album,” which is riddled with mutters, coughs, false starts and control room chatter’ (120-121). However, there is a function to the cut, I want to maintain. Coming after Unwashed – a heavy social critique – and before Letter to Hermione – an intimate, heart on the sleeve ballad – it lightens the mood, then gives us the clown before the tears. Worth noting is that the track went unlisted on the UK version of the album. And it wasn’t even included on the American version. That is the way it stayed for the big 1972 re-release with the Ziggy cover and retitling to Space Oddity. It was back and listed as a track on the 1990 Rykodisc/EMI CD release of the album, however, the 2009 and 2015 reissues went back to the original UK release format, it’s there, but unlisted. What we would now call a hidden track…
Written by David Bowie. Recorded between late August and September 1969. Released 14 November 1969. Available on Space Oddity (1969) and any versions of the album released after 1990
