I Killed Ike Turner

Proud Mary, 2007
Digital video, 5 min 47 sec

For the Funeral Songs installation, I made a music video for my song with the assistance of artist Sari TM Kivinen. All the other 160 or so funeral songs I collected were installed in a jukebox, but as it's my funeral and I'll cry if I want to, I decided on audio-visual treatment for my song.

My song (at least for the moment) is Proud Mary by Tina Turner. I often dance to this song when drunk at home with friends. Sometimes people join in as my backup dancers. Dying is a bit like rolling down the river.

In fact, for future incarnations of Funeral Songs, I'd like to make this a 2 channel video, with the other screen depicting me floating in a lake as if dead. Either floating for real, or with the assistance of a blow-up raft. I just ran out of time and budget this time around.

That aside, the feedback I had on Funeral Songs at MOP has been quite fantastic. The Art Life blog called the installation "fairly simple, yet amazingly profound" and on the video, they said, "he's [got] some serious moves in his dance repertoire".

Another amazing, albeit spooky thing about this project is that on opening night, 13 December a MOP, people came up to me to say how Ike Turner died the day before, though the news had broken in the southern hemisphere on the 13th (the day of my show). This came as a shock and I felt like I killed him! But my dance moves are dedicated to Tina and I selected a post-Ike 1993 version of the song.

Even though the song was first performed by Creedence Clearwater Revival in 1969, Proud Mary really is Tina at her most amazing. Tina used to perform the song with Ike and in 1972 they won a Grammy for the cover. I saw Tina live in concert twice in the 90s and Proud Mary was always the set's money shot. Just as the song gets "rough", fireworks go off and the stage comes alive with hyperactive dance moves and piercing light show. You could die right at that moment and know your life's work as a spectator has been rich and meaningful.

Most people think I'm really uncool to like Tina Turner. But I always tell them that her Number One fan is the very cool John Waters. Waters preferred her early days "when she was still with Ike, had a mustache and wore ratty mink coats" (Liner notes to A Date with John Waters CD, 2007). I interviewed John Waters earlier this year and the article appears is in the 320 page Andy Warhol book produced for the GOMA/Queensland Art Gallery show, which I am yet to see. If I knew Ike was gonna die, I would have dropped an Ike and Tina reference into the conversation. (In this interview by Scott Gordon, John Waters talks more about his love for Tina).

Tina Turner and John Waters share the same stage in the legend stakes. Now poor dead Ike - bless his wifebeating soul - may posthumously restore some of that early legend status that made him such a star back in the day. I wonder what Ike's funeral song would have been? River Deep Mountain High is what I hope was played.

So now you're in the mood, check out my Proud Mary dance moves at:

www.danielmcunningham.com (in the artist section).

Sailing

Sailing 1979 / 2007

My maternal grandmother Pauline Cooper (1933-2004) introduced me to the concept of the 'funeral song'.

Nan was my best mate. A couple of times I ran away from home during primary school years in the mid-1980s. As we lived at Hurstville and my Nan at Rockdale (in the southern suburbs of Sydney) it wasn't the biggest journey. Actually it was on foot and my mum was always a bit flabbergasted that I'd walk there.

Nan was cool. She used to let me stay up all hours watching Rage on the ABC, but only if I would tape music videos for her as she liked to have them playing when she did the housework. She was a big fan of Rod Stewart, Tina Turner and Michael Jackson. She thought Madonna a "Jezebel". Nan even recorded some songs herself off the Saturday morning show Video Hits - back when it was palatable (pre-bling, denim hipsters and date rape).

I recall circa 1987 that Nan was so proud that she'd managed to be in the right place and time to tape Fleetwood Mac's music video Everywhere. I haven't seen the video for ages, but it's typical Fleetwood Mac: white horses, shadows and magic. But within days of her taping it, I accidentally recorded another music video over it. The video accidentally replacing Fleetwood Mac was Walk the Dinosaur by Was Not Was - a ridiculous song that I'd say no one remembers except it has been viewed on YouTube over 100,000 times! When I confessed to Nan, she was really upset and it was the only time I remember her being mad at me. (But I think she was probably only mad for about half an hour).

And I don't blame her for being upset: I would get mad if anyone fucked with whatever was my favourite song at the time. If she was alive today I would find it for her on YouTube. And I just know that after playing it for her she would tell me to rewind it. She had a thing about archiving her VHS and keeping them in pristine user-friendly condition. I just know that Nan would hate the digital era - she never had a DVD player even though she watched them when she visited family members who had DVD players. But she could never get her head around the fact that a movie (on a disc) had the same formal properties as a format renowned only for audio. And it took her ages to comprehend the audio CD after years of saying she'd never stop buying vinyl. I'm glad she stuck to her guns as her vinyl comprises some of the best I have in my collection today.

Music was a huge part of my Nan's life and she introduced me to heaps of music that I still listen to today. For as long as I can remember Nan would tell everyone in my large Irish Catholic family that if we didn't play Sailing by Rod Stewart at her funeral, she would haunt us. As she had Parkinson's Disease for about 20 years before passing away in 2004, she could be quite a handful, so the thought of being 'haunted' was not alluring.

When she died, we played Sailing at her funeral, twice actually. Her funeral was held at a small, discreet cemetery near Sanctuary Point, on the south coast where she moved after retirement. As Sailing played the second time, a very conspicuous jet plane flew overhead, showing off with a nosedive before flying away and leaving a thick cloud of exhaust in its wake.

To this day my family talk about how Nan's exit was so theatrical, so uncannily fitting.