AlternativeSoundtrack #5
(Barrett Strong – Money)
Not sure how fresh in your memory the film is? but this next scene is the one where Eddie, who has been drinking JTS Brown, (Bourbon), straight out of the bottle for hours is beginning to look tired as the alcohol takes it’s toll. Minnesotta Fats on the other hand steps into the washroom, combs his hair, washes his hands, puts on his suit jacket and looking as fresh as a daisy, (he’s been drinking Whiskey too), delivers a killer line of dialogue and proceeds to ‘wet’ the kid up.
“Fast Eddie……”
The accompanying slice of musicology is a famous 1960 cut on the Tamla, (Motown), label from Barrett Strong the rip roaring cut that catapulted Motown into the spotlight, (where it stayed for more than 20 years). Strong went on to become one of Motown, (and Soul’s), premier songwriters who, in collaboration with partner Norman Whitfield, wrote many a classic for Cats such as Marvin Gaye ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’, Edwin Starr ‘War’ and The Temptations ‘Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone’.
themusicologist 
it became so well known, and yet it still sounds
so good all these years on…one of the sounds
that transports me back to me dancin days!
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club sound or dancehall?
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oh definately the Lyceum dancehall..watched the Hustler last night so as to fill in the gaps, as ever
with the ‘alternatives’, so grateful to be reminded
of some of the great films…I thought George C. Scott’s performance was masteful, the film was great in so many ways, not least because the action is mainly in ‘pool halls’, places of mystery to me growing up!.
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From memory alone… this is the part of the film where my heart sunk into my boots. Its the beginning of the end for my hero Fast Eddie.
You know, there must have some kind of back-handed propaganda thing going on when this film was about because another of my (film) heros suffered a similar fate around the same time (I think)…….
“An’ You Can Tell That To The Birds An’ Bees”…. says it all!!
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for me it’s more like the end of the beginning. It’s painful to watch the way he degenerates so quickly and ends up on the floor in a drunken heap whilst Minnesota is still so fresh and cool as Ice but ‘High rolling’ has no room for the emotions..there’s only winners and losers…weakhearts eventually fall into the second category. I imagine there was a lot of propaganda around at the time..the Cold War was at it’s zenith and ‘Game Theory’ was the prefered strategy. ‘Fuck You Buddy’…a game Invented by John Nash at ‘Rand’ where everyone was out for himself and there was no community other than the community of I….The Century Of The Self in it’s full Glory. I’ll stop it there before getting into a philosophical dialogue about ‘Enlightenment’ and it’s discontents. J.J Rousseau sounds to me like knew ‘the coup’.
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