"Left Bank Two" is a piece of library music composed by Wayne Hill in 1963 and performed by the Noveltones, a group of session musicians from the Netherlands. It is best known in UK popular culture as the music used in "The Gallery" sequence during the children's television programmes Vision On, in which the art sent into the programme by young viewers was displayed, and subsequently in the equivalent segment in early series of Take Hart, a programme presented by Tony Hart, formerly a co-presenter on Vision On. It was also used later on in the 2000s for the Gallery segment in SMart.
However, the tune almost never got recorded. The session musicians who were rattling through recording a load of library music pieces for De Wolfe had some studio time left over on their session, so the question was asked "Does anyone have anything else they'd like to try?" to which the young vibes player, Wayne Hill, replied "Well, there is this thing I've been working on …" and produced the tune which is now so famous. Wayne and the other musicians quickly completed the composition and recorded it on the spot as a "throwaway" piece in their left-over studio time.
The piece has become synonymous with the making of art for those growing up in the 1970s, and has been used in a number of adverts for clients including Picture Loans, Volkswagen and Castrol Oil.
In popular culture
The track was used as background music in the 2008 PlayStation 3 video game LittleBigPlanet and used again in LittleBigPlanet 2, the latter as an 8-bit version of the track. It's also been used in a 2011 advertisement for the British supermarket chain Waitrose.
The track was used during seasons seven and nine of NBC's America's Got Talent and during season two of the The X Factor (U.S.) Also, the BBC panelshow QI features it in some episodes.