Notes on Anna

Notes on Anna

Anna was originally a chord progression of ADE done slowly with each chord in a sixth shape and no sevenths. The song was written on Napier Hill in 2000 and was part of a show on Alan Maddox, the idea being that Maddox, in a reflective mood, was thinking about Anna Hoffman. The slowness of the chord progression and the use of bar shapes was meant to give a 3am effect, the party after the guests have gone with a few people sitting around. It goes with Veronica Bay a song which has Maddox or MadX in a gloomy state at Veronica Bay at the bottom of the hill. My house on Seaview Terrace looked out across the water and down onto the bay. It also goes with Colin a song written about the night Maddox went the Stairways Gallery to learn of the death of Colin McCahon. Also with Cutting Up Your Mates, about Maddox and Clairmont threatening to cut up one another's paintings. Depends who is telling the story as to who is threatening to cut. I had Maddox.

Coming back to the bar chords these were influenced by a few things. Working on the boats out of Auckland in the late sixties those of us from South Auckland would often stay in town. They had what was known as 'working by'. This meant that you started by what they called 'standing on the corner' The corner was the Seaman's Corner and you did not stand as much as just hang around until your name was called to work on a boat that day. This all started about 6.30.

So you would get called out, go to work on a boat- you could always shower and change on the boat- until about two o'clock and then repair to the Birdcage. When that closed at six o'clock you would go to the back bar at Gleeson's which was near the Seaman's Corner and stay there until it came time to walk a few yards and stand on the corner again.

And there was always someone with a guitar who, around the two or three am mark, was playing the kind of chord progression that I wanted to put, in 2000, into the song, Anna. Laurie Garnett or someone...Gerry Hill would know.

Originally it had an introduction that was slow Django Reinhart stuff that I had learned or attempted to learn from Paul Marx in the early seventies. I'd seen Paul and John Hayday produce this sequence of chords for my play Voices in the Street at a point where Roy Billing as Sam wandered around stage thinking about things. In the late seventies I'd attempted this sequence myself while busking with David Walker in Marble Arch London.

At that time the Oxford University Rugby League Club was a musical outfit. Howard Henry used the bar chords in Cook Islands Songs. Dave Walker had figured out Chuck Berry in an interesting way. People who had nothing to do with Rugby League but who knew about music were always around. Someone who I called Radio Four because he ran a programme on blues music on the BBC seemed to always be on shoulder. Solomon Islanders. We would meet at he Gardeners Arms so Dan and Winnie Davin and co were always there.

Radio Four would go on about the Black Mardi Gras in New Orleans and his stories had an influence on Veronica Bay and also on Radio Song which was composed in 2005 as I tried to get marching effects such as you het with a trombine on the step up, or forward in a march.

But Anna or its introduction were not about marching but about kicking back and laxing out.

The other influence on the introduction was a scene towards the end of a film called Hail Hail, Rock and Roll where Chuck Berry is relaxing and playing a set of slow chords. John Johnson, Chuck's pianist, may be in there too somewhere. Chuck is getting over an evening of straightahead Rock and Roll which had been organised by Keith Richard.

I don't think there is a recording of that introduction.

The chords in he song and those in the intro are the chords people play to get over rock. Recovery stuff, reflective guitar.

Another influence was an old song by Dean Martin, To know you is to love you.

So far all this is pretty cute but what happened next and then after that broke things up a bit.

In 2001 the song got picked up by a Hip Hop crew, Rebirth from New Plymouth and Palmerston North. Rebirth liked the lyrics and were not impressed with the chords- the sevenths, sixths, bars etc- at all. They got rid of the guitar altogether. Rebirth liked the tune I guess.

So they, Brother Teepz mainly, gutted the music and put in a strict hip hop bass loop with a kind of organ sound on top.

This version is the one that people who listen to Kia Ora FM know. On any given Friday night it will be requested from a happy hour at a place in Awapuni and people sing along and carry on about it.

Rebirth's music has lasted in terms of requests from a highly critical rap audience on Kia Ora FM. Different. Warren G comes closest I suppose.

That direction ceased when Tipene aka Br Teepz went to prison for murder in 2002.

At the same time and into 2003 the song Veronica Bay got taken into a very different direction when it was included in Peter Wheeler's collection of stories and songs, Angels and Demons. In a word it all went folk. Whoever mastered it, someone at Radio Access, Palmerston North, really got into the guitar work and built it up. The story of that guitar work is another one altogether. The audience was very different, the collection being extremely well reviewed by Professors of History and English Literature.

The song Colin, written to describe the reaction to the death of Colin McCahon by people at the Stairways Gallery in Napier, went in yet another direction. There are people in the Urewera who like a single string version of the song.

Coming back to Anna.

In 2004-5 I did an insane, for me, amount of work on guitar for Radio Song/The story continues for Alicia Keys and Aretha Franklin. This changed what I do with the guitar. That includes later versions of Anna. One string work. Low notes.

In 2005-6 I started to get interested in Anna Nicole Smith as part of a general interest in performers and performance work found at the outskirts of E. There are a whole set of songs from around this time the best of which is You're Free for Ana Carolina Reston in 2006- also done as a song for Sally Rodwell whose partner Alan Brunton published Anna Hoffman's two volume autobiography.

There is also a lot of work on pitch from this time in which I remain, I think, the sole interested person. The Kingdom of the Keys is the song that comes out of that. High vocal. Mongolian throat music. Talk about Lennon coming through. It got creepy enough to go back to the guitar plus vocal in one take, the Last Gasp Cafe.

In 2006 a version of Anna was produced as a dedication to Anna Nicole Smith. The guitar work was redone in, I guess, an E style- after the TV channel E- so that it functions or is meant to function as background muzak. Popular.

And out of that and some commentary on Anna Nicole Smith there came a long and involved discussion with people on the net about Anna's inheritance from the oil tycoon. The song started or helped to start a discussion on contract law.

When Ana Nicole Smith died there was another kind of thing altogether about the song. The lyrics were foregrounded, the guitar was distorted.

As it came through on the net the song that went onto the net after Anna Nicole's death is ragged, sloppy even. The video is tired.

So I tried to get back in a version using lots of script in the video, taking the song back to Anna Hoffmann of Papatoetoe. Again the guitar work is nothing much. But it could well be time to make notes on Anna, the video, Anna, the look. Something for Illusions and the Film Archive, something for models.

In 2007 there is a Last Gasp Cafe which features Anna using single string work.

Lyrics

Anna

Like a trip on the tongue
You sit in my mind, Anna
Like a wind in the sand
You tickle my fancy Anna
Oo ee, Oo ee
The moon comes gently down on you,
Anna

Send me a line from your ocean liner, Anna
Tell me the time where the sun meets your mind Anna,
Oo ee, Oo ee
The moon comes gently down on you,
Anna

Musical interlude
Oo ee, Oo ee
the moon comes gently down on you
Anna

Like a trip on the tongue
You sit in my mind, Anna
Like a wind in the sand
You tickle my fancy Anna
Oo ee, Oo ee
The moon comes gently down on you,
Anna