![]() ![]() Sam and Harry, my cheerfully overweight gay men, enjoy the soundtrack to that great film Dil Se in their shop. He would love Pizzicato Five's "Twiggy Twiggy." On a trip to Japan, my hero Kenyon claims to go into a temple where "there was some sort of ceremony going on inside - I think there must have been ceremonial drumming - and I just sat and let myself be swept away." I think he'd have had much more fun with some proper Japanese pop music. But out of respect to my husband's sensibilities, I'm going to suggest Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos. There is also, in the novel, another Wagner, or at least "Siegfried's Funeral March" from Gotterdammerung, given a one-woman early-morning vocal performance by a thirteen-year old girl. Well, I love it, and it makes me cry infallibly at the end. Some visiting American academics reflect that, where they come from, you had to travel an hour by plane "to glimpse a soprano singing a single note in the German language on an operatic stage." My husband some time ago grew impatient with the curious fact that whenever we go away for the weekend, by some quirk of fate, the only thing which is ever on at the opera house is "Die Walkure". It's one of those wonderful pieces of Brahms which can suddenly make you pause in whatever you were doing with its surprising path. Gordon moved on from Bach, of which "some people said it was not only his only piece but his only accomplishment in life" to something a bit grander, such as Brahms's E minor cello sonata. Personally, I'm not that bothered by Bach. Like a lot of amateur cellists, another inhabitant of Hanmouth, John Gordon, makes a big show of the Bach G major cello suite. It has an odd trick, of breaking into a broad smile from time to time. There's a town-band quality to Dvorak which is just so lovable, and I hope the brigadier's evening included the lovely Wind Serenade. My Brigadier likes "to do the week's ironing on a Tuesday evening, and nothing much got between him, the ironing and Dvorak Evening on the radio." I love Dvorak, too - I love him when he's buoyant and I love him when he's ever so slightly bumptious. Here are some of the things that the inhabitants of Hanmouth listen to when they're not gossiping, backbiting, having affairs, sneaking off behind their partners' backs, starting up gay orgies, taking drugs and all the other disgraceful behaviour that small towns are so prone to. So when I wrote a novel about a community in Devon in England, its likes and dislikes, its prejudices and its passions, it's not surprising that it has a knack of creeping in. Music is important to me - I love it, and it's been with me, more or less, all my life. ![]() There's a surprising amount of music in my new novel, King of the Badgers. In his own words, here is Philip Hensher's Book Notes music playlist for his novel, King of the Badgers: If you don't have Spotify yet, sign up for the free service. Stream a Spotify playlist of these tunes. After all, any novel capable of being precisely summed up in a short review is rarely worth reading." It is certainly easier to read than to summarise, and this is as it should be. "King of the Badgers is a rich and ambitious novel, which manages both to offer a convincing picture of different levels of English society today and to explore the shifting certainties of individual lives. Philip Hensher's latest novel King of the Badgers is a brilliant commentary on life in modern England while examining the delicate balance between privacy and security. Previous contributors include Bret Easton Ellis, Kate Christensen, Kevin Brockmeier, George Pelecanos, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, David Peace, Myla Goldberg, and many others. In 2011, Made in USA was included in LA Weekly 's "beginner's guide" to Shibuya-kei music.In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Critical reception Professional ratings Review scores The compilation is titled after the 1966 film Made in U.S.A, directed by Jean-Luc Godard, one of the band's inspirations. Along with the Five by Five EP released earlier in 1994, it introduced Pizzicato Five to a Western audience. The album was released in the United States on Octoby Matador Records, serving as the band's first full-length, and second overall, American release on the label. ![]() Made in USA is a compilation album by Japanese pop band Pizzicato Five.
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