Songs for Sovereign Professionals: Loser

This is a personal inclusion. The song doesn’t relate too closely to the concerns of the Sovereign Professional … other than in the refrain:

I got no chance of losing this time.

Ignoring the irony and the narrator’s self-delusion, of course.

The song first appeared on Jerry Garcia’s 1972 solo album, Garcia, but I heard it on the Grateful Dead’s 1981 album Dead Set. That was a long time ago.

One of the first job interviews, sometime in the 1980s, required me to travel and stay overnight, then catch a bus the next morning to my prospective employers. I was nervous as hell. It was a country house hotel and, in those pre-internet days, the first glimpse I had of the hotel was from the end of its long, winding drive. And, it felt right. And, I felt good. And, that refrain was in my head.

Here’s the Dead from 1983 …

And the album:

Incidentally, that cover, more than anything else made me want to see San Francisco. The back cover has an almost mirror image, but showing a view over Manhattan and Brooklyn.