TINA VERSUS ARETHA: OR TRASH TRASHES ART YET AGAIN!!!!!

For the last few days I've been groovin' to a lot of Ike & Tina Turner. A week or so ago I was listening to loads of Aretha Franklin. As a result, to me it seems like all that sixties battle of the bands Beatles versus Stones hype ain't got nothin' 'gainst the Tina and Aretha tussle. Now if you ain't really thought about it, then it seems like Aretha should win hands down coz technically she can sing the pants off Tina; Aretha combines subtlety of approach with full frontal attack, whereas Tina bellows all the time (but man can she bark). And Tina's post-Ike solo career might be taken as a major weakness. Aretha is an artist, her work isn't patchy in the way Tina's was (which is partly due to Ike's desire for cash up front and willingness to put out what were essentially demos if he could get paid for them). Aretha did release one late-sixties turkey, "Aretha In Paris", but her "Live At Filmore West" pees over almost every other soul revue platter (with the obvious exception of James Brown "Live At The Apollo" part 1, 2 & 3). And while its fun to listen to a variety of Aretha albums, "Live At Filmore West" and "I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You" are what really stand out. What I dig the most on this latter studio recording is "Save Me", which is basically Van Morrison's garage anthem "Glroia" with new words and added horns. In this instance Aretha takes super dumb three chord thud and transforms it into something superior. But on "Aretha Arrives" the cover of ? & The Mysterions' transcendentally dumb "96 Tears" doesn't even bear comparison to Jimmy Ruffin's far simpler and more successful soul take on this particular piece of sleaze, let alone the Tex-Mex 'original'. There is nothing primal about Aretha and her rendition of "96 Tears" is boring.

If I was forced to cull my music collection, I couldn't be doing with just two albums by Ike and Tina, okay so there's nothing in their oeuvre to match "I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You" and I could happily dump my copy of "Don't Play Me Cheap" due to the horrid orchestration, but I dig almost all of Ike & Tina's sixties output and the energy shines thru despite Ike's often sloppy production. And leaving the "River Deep, Mountain High" cut aside, I'd take Ike's production over Phil Spector any day. While many 'critics' 'think' the "The River Deep, Mountain High" album is patchy because of Ike's production contributions, I find some of Spector's tracks (especially the reworking of "Save The Last Dance For Me") far more irritating. Moving on to the late period United Artists funk 'n' pop sessions, these are more consistent in their production values but Ike & Tina dishing up two Lennon & McCartney covers dampens the impact of an album like "Workin' Together" (the closing version of "Let It Be" while preferable to The Beatles "original", is still lame).

Tina also made some hot solo recordings in the seventies - not just the "Acid Queen" track, check her cover of "Whole Lotta Love" which puts both Led Zep and CCS to shame.That said, the "What's Love Got To Do With It" era that followed in the eighties and nineties wasn't necessarily something that went wrong. Tina's pop rebirth was necessary to remove any aura of 'authenticity' surrounding her more classic recordings, and to confirm her status as a 'real' 'Queen of Trash'. Leaving aside the most immediate issues brought up by gendered power relations in our hierarchical society, one of the things that interests me about the stories surrounding the disintegration of Ike & Tina's marriage is the way they turn Tina into a puppet, a mouthpiece. Rather than detracting from tracks like "It's Gonna Work Out Fine" and "Something Came Over Me", this adds to their power. Instead of a conversation, these pieces have been transformed into Ike talking to himself, a kind of 'anti-communication'. Retrospectively it appears that Ike was ventriloquising Tina, and this almost perfectly illustrates the way commodification turns subjects in objects and vice versa. It might also be taken as indicative of how ventriloquism (and hypnotism for that matter) work; it is the belief of an audience in the phenomena, rather than the 'power' of those utilising it, that makes it seem 'real'.

Tina's 'trash' 'career' taken en bloc provides a more powerful critique of capitalist social relations than Aretha's 'art'. Trash undermines the bourgeoisie in a way that art never can. Fortunately we don't have to choose between Tina and Aretha, but if we did I'd go for Tina (with Ike) every time. I still listen to Aretha's Columbia recordings and jazzier Atlantic output like "Soul 69" but they ain't on my hi fi as much as Ike & Tina because trash trashes art every time...

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