Getting Lucky

On Winning, Losing & Playing The Game

“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”
Cormac McCarthy (from No Country for Old Men)

Greetings from a windy lake in the Canadian countryside! It’s the morning after a wild-eyed storm I was lucky enough to witness from safely behind a beautiful big window, and my fourth anniversary of writing Loose Connections and this is my 150th published piece!

It feels like a time to reflect.

I truly did not know when I wrote my first piece if I really had it in me to commit to writing a newsletter consistently - but I do love to work on instinct, fly by the seat of my pants and dive right in before I know what’s what and I am sure glad I took a gamble on myself, because writing Loose Connections is not only the longest-running regular creative act I have ever engaged in (except of course making music my entire adult life), but it is truly such a joy to explore any and all the weirds corners of music and culture that tickle my fancy and share my thoughts and findings right here with you! I feel very lucky to have a way to write whatever I want and to be able to find likeminded souls across the universe who will read it.

And without wanting to sound like a travelling saleswoman, if you’re able to and would like to help support the body of work I’m making here, I’m offering a half price yearly subscription for the rest of April - that’s USD$30. I publish my essays for free to all subscribers, but paid subscriptions help me grow and are what Substack bases its recommendations and leaderboards on, so they are super helpful and meaningful to deciding my popular fate. Forgive my infomercial, but nothing to lose by putting what you want out there - after all, no-one is a mind reader!

It is a time of great unpredictability, economic meltdowns, true horror stories, shifting sands and a world turned sideways if not upside down by forces outside our control. All we can do is roll with the punches, be kind, be vigilant, hope for the best and try to stay lucky - and remember that the only sure thing about luck is that it always changes. As Tom Petty says, even the losers get lucky sometimes!

So I have been thinking a lot about gambling, getting lucky, losing streaks, winning streaks, casinos, bad cards, good fortune, playing diamonds, playing hearts and throwing it all away. As a thank you to all my readers, here is a timely playlist featuring a collection of songs on this very matter for you to ponder or dance away your own troubles, choices, dilemmas or wins.

There’s songs you’ll know and love and songs you’ll never have heard and hopefully songs you’ll get to know and love, including tracks by MJ Lenderman, Kenny Rogers (how could I not?), Ray Charles, Peggy Lee, Holiday Sidewinder, Ben Lee, Billy Strings, Rolling Stones, Leon Bridges, Tom Waits, Beck, Sonny Clark, Daniel Johnson, Stevie Nicks, Chaparelle and George Jones.

I just tested it out playing blackjack with monopoly money with my family and yeah, it ups the stakes and provides the perfect soundtrack to your cheatin’ hearts and your gamblin’ nights.

Here it is on APPLE MUSIC

Here it is on SPOTIFY

Here it is on YOUTUBE

In keeping with the important musical enlightenment services I like to try to provide here, I thought you would want to know about these possibly cautionary loose musical/gambling connections.

When Gladys Knight was struggling through hard times, raising her kids alone and broke, she got heavy into gambling to pay for books and school fees for almost a decade - at one point winning sixty thousand dollars. One morning when she realised she was still at the blackjack table when she was meant to be taking her kids to school, she says she felt so sick about it, she went straight to the casino phone and called Gamblers Anonymous who sent someone to pick her up right away and she was on her way to recovery.

Madonna won second prize of $130k in the Italian SuperEnaLotto, which she put towards building a school for girls in Malawi, Africa - a controversial project that unfortunately never came to fruition.

Though Madonna was a bringer of good luck to one woman in Hawaii, who won nearly a million dollars on a Madonna themed slot machine.

Motörhead’s Lemmy, born Ian Fraser Kilmister, is rumoured to have garnered his nickname from his habit of asking ‘Lend me a quid til Friday’ so he could play the slot machines, with which he was obsessed. Lemmy wrote the monster Motorhead anthem ‘Ace of Spades’ with lyrics full of cards, dice and other gambling metaphors, though he says ‘I'm more into the one-arm bandits actually, but you can't really sing about spinning fruit, and the wheels coming down’.

Count your blessings, give a little love, keep your poker face and your money in your pockets, dance with the devil and remember storms never last and snake eyes are watching you, double or nothing (thanks Lemmy),

Lo x

PS Leave me a heart would ya? Or share, or tell me things below… like what songs about risking and winning and losing did I miss???