#world party

[guessimdumb]

World Party - Ship of Fools (live) (1996)

R.I.P. Karl Wallinger

#World Party #Ship of Fools #Karl Wallinger #Boulder Colorado

[rayonthego]

Played this so much back in the day.

#world party #Karl Wallinger #RIP #music #spotify

[musickickztoo]

RIP Karl Wallinger 

October 19, 1957 – March 10, 2024

#karl wallinger #world party #the waterboys #march 10 #october 19

[daiseys-vintage-and-cool-stuff]

#world party #put the message in the box #karl wallinger #Youtube

[spilladabalia]

World Party - Ship Of Fools

#world party #ship of fools #karl wallinger #delahaye #rufus dove #millenium mills #martin finnuncane #ahmed gottlieb #anthony thistlethwaite #will towyn #pop #rock #pop rock #private revolution #1987 #Youtube

[bostonfly]

Karl Wallinger, songwriter and frontman of World Party, dies at 66

#music #world party

[meetmeinthesandbox]

RIP Karl Wallinger

Photo from 1993 - World Party opened up for 10,000 Maniacs at Poplar Creek, Hoffman Estates, IL.

#karl wallinger #world party #the waterboys #singer songwriter #neo psychedelic #alternative rock

[burnandshiverconsulting]

RIP Karl Wallinger.

#Karl Wallinger #world party #the waterboys #singer songwriter

[dinosaursr66]

The world lost an exceptional talent on March 10. Karl Wallinger, lead singer and songwriter of World Party passed away. I was fortunate to find him in two bands. He also played with the Waterboys. Both bands were excellent. This song is one of my favorites. RIP Karl.

SONG OF THE DAY - Thursday, March 14, 2024

#song of the day #world party #the waterboys #karl wallinger #rip #Youtube

[greensparty]

Remembering Karl Wallinger 1957-2024

Musician Karl Wallinger has died at 68. Total bummer. He was a member of The Waterboys from 1983-85 (I know mostly their late 80s / early 90s work. But he really found his voice as the leader of World Party, a highly underrated college radio band from 1986-2015. They had a string of bangers like "Ship of Fools", "Way Down Now" (an MTV Buzz Bin video I remember seeing as a teen), and "She's the One" (featured on a few soundtracks including The Matchmaker, which I was a Location Intern on). I remember seeing them on SNL and the MTV VMA's.

Music video for "Way Down Now"

In addition to his own music, Wallinger was did the music for Ben Stiller's Reality Bites. World Party appeared on the soundtrack with "When You Come Back to Me", which beared a striking resemblance to David Bowie's "Young Americans". World Party also contributed a cover of Mott the Hoople's "All the Young Dudes" to the soundtrack to Clueless as well. He also collaborated with Sinead O'Connor, Peter Gabriel, and Bob Geldof.

The link above is the obit from Consequence of Sound.

#karl wallinger #rip #the waterboys #world party #the matchmaker #reality bites #clueless #sinead o'connor #peter gabriel #bob geldof #music nerd #Youtube

[dollarbin]

Dollar Bin #9:

World Party's Goodbye Jumbo

In the Spring of 1990 I became momentary friends with the edgy older dude next door.

I was 14 and in 8th grade, emerging from a month of missed school due to an epic case of poison oak followed by an even more epic bout with the chicken pox. I looked like the Elephant Man, one eye blistered entirely shut. Edgy Older Dude was in his mid-twenties and was definitely on drugs.

How do I know he was on drugs, you ask? Don't worry, I still know little to nothing about drugs. But a year after our moment of friendship Edgy Guy moved out and my dad, who owned the guy's apartment, sent me over to clean out his kitchen. In the frig I found, swear to God, at least 7 open bottles of identical BBQ sauce. Now my frig today can get a bit chaotic; sometimes I discover we're working on two competing jars of mayo simultaneously. But only a 20-something white dude on drugs is capable of racking up 7+ squirt jars of Kraft's Slow Simmered Original.

Anyway, this guy and I conducted our friendship entirely through his bedroom window. You see, at that point in 8th grade I was searching for The Answer. So were you. A calendar year earlier I Won't Back Down had fundamentally changed my life. Tom Petty's full moon masterpiece disinterested me in baseball cards and comic books forever and set me firmly on the path that led straight to the Dollar Bin.

Petty led me to the Wilburys; the Wilburys led me to the Beatles; the Beatles led me to insist on getting a pair of Lennon's circular granny frames at the optometrist. But then I hit a roadblock. MTV was all Aerosmith and Janet Jackson and I never could work up the energy to try and understand Janie's Got a Gun or what had happened in 1814. So what was next? My 8th grade self had no idea.

Then World Party's Put the Message in the Box glided out the window next door: a warm, earnest cloud of harmony and comfort set to a white guy beat.

And if you listen now, you might hear, a new sound coming in, as an old one disappears...

Him: "Hey kid, what's up?"

(It was a reasonable question. I was standing directly outside his bedroom window, staring in, transfixed.)

Me: "Oh, hey. Sorry. I like that song, sir."

Him: "Yeah. Just came out. World Party. Totally sweet."

Me: "Wow. Yeah. I like the Beatles."

Him: "Right on kid. Want me to tape this for you?"

Me: "Wow. Yeah. Like, totally."

A day later the guy's arm stuck out the window and passed me a Maxell tape (remember the guy sitting in profile in his armchair, getting blown away by the audio quality one experienced from a Maxell tape?) of World Party's Goodbye Jumbo, an album I will now argue belongs in the pantheon of still extremely worthwhile 80's White Guy Rock.

Ah, the category known as Worthwhile 80's White Guy Rock. Stephen Stills appears in it not. Little did you know that what started with Armed Forces and found prestige pinnacles with The Joshua Tree, Disintegration, Graceland, So and Synchronicity, and classic oddball variations with Shooting Rubber Bands at the Stars and Petty, Dylan and Co's various resuscitations, all finds its righteous conclusion in Goodbye Jumbo, Karl Wallinger's fantastic double to The White Album.

Of course Goodbye Jumbo remains a very minor record in comparison to the others I mention above. If there's a signature sound from the album left in the memory of anyone other than me it's likely the brief, squirming riff that opens the first single, Way Down Now. Wallingher squeezes his guitar like a full tube of toothpaste, spiraling out a strangled surge of joy. Take a listen.

At the close of the 80's my father seemed like the person least likely to help me on my quest to find awesome popular music. My siblings and I grew up without a working stereo in the house and when I insisted we listen to Running Down a Dream in the car the only vaguely relevant comment my mercurial and forever overworked dad could summon up was that I should really listen to Toad, Cream's 8 minute drum solo song from Wheels of Fire. Somehow that track, and that track alone, had lodged in his memory. Was his recommendation earnest or mischievous? Definitely both. That's my dad.

Anyway, my father's sole moment of brilliance when it comes to talking to me about music in the last 35 years came when he first overheard me listening to Way Down Now. As the song began to climax and soar he stepped over the Millennium Falcon that still cluttered up my bedroom floor and started singing along!

Woo-Woo! Woo-Woo!

Somewhere in his brain, otherwise crammed with Reganomics, house paint color wheels and bidding estimates, there was still room left for Toad and the background vocal line from Sympathy for the Devil.

"Your band is stealing from the Stones, son," he said as the song ended. Then he wandered off, continuing to sing it, without further explanation, leaving me totally flummoxed: who were "the Stones" and what did they have to do with the fantastic music coming from the homemade tape I had on repeat? Furthermore, did my father have a secret life?

I once again sought out the dude next door, standing at his window, oblivious to all social mores, until he reappeared.

"What's up kid? Like the tape?"

"Oh yes, sir. But my dad says they're stealing from the Stones."

"The Rolling Stones? Damn, he's right. Sympathy for the Devil. They're stealing from everyone. It's genius. The fifth track is my favorite. Pure Prince."

At that point I was even more confused. I knew about The Rolling Stones. My friends Matt and Eric, who had cool dads, had gone to see Keith and Mick at the LA Colosseum the year before; Guns and Roses, whose fold-out naked lady tape cover for Lies scared the living crap out of me, had opened for them. But how could a band copy the senior citizens behind Mixed Emotions and the Bat Dance guy at the same time?

I went, like a good little boy, and listened to my tape again, counting down to the fifth track, Ain't Gonna Come Till I'm Ready, and I instantly discovered it was the only song I couldn't stand on the album. Maybe Neighbor Dude and I were not destined to be best friends after all. World Party sang like a girl in that song! The word "falsetto" was definitely not in my vocabulary and it would take another year or so before I heard Crazy Love and began to understand white people soul music.

Another word that was not in my vocabulary was "genre", but my self-education took a step forward when I realized that every song on Goodbye Jumbo had a different mood, a different sound.

Listen to the album today and all this stuff is obvious. The album opens with a handmade gesture; Is It Too Late? is Eno sitting in on the Let It Be sessions, with Wallinger turning on an amateur drum machine and then asking an engineer to start recording even though, obviously, he's already rolling. Does this band know what they are doing, we wonder? Of course they do; by the middle of the track things are on fire.

Every song that follows after in Goodbye Jumbo unfurls its own unique sonic banner. Check out the clouded rainbow dream pop of When the Dream Comes, or the Plastic Ono beautiful death march of God On My Side, or the Dylan/Simon breakfast cereal mashup on Take It Up.

In the decade that followed, Yo La Tengo took Goodbye Jumbo's mixtape, honor-thy-many-masters, approach and perfected it. They rocked; they crooned; they raged; they droned. But Ira, Georgia and James were three (ridiculously talented) people. Wallinger built Goodbye Jumbo alone. That's right; don't be fooled by the full band, cheesy music videos: like the aforementioned Plastic Ono Band, World Party was basically just one guy playing every instrument.

The lyrics on the record are tough for me to measure with any real objectivity. Love Street and Put the Message in the Box sounded to me, at age 14, like sister tracks to Let it Be and Imagine. Wallinger isn't humble on this record; he's out to change the world with a way early environmentalist focus and all kinds of Pleas For Understanding that probably sound pretentious to modern ears. But I still hear those songs like I'm back in Algebra 1, teaching myself how to draw peace signs.

By one measure Goodbye Jumbo is the last record I own that should be considered for the Dollar Bin. Last Spring, after 30 years of looking, I found a pristine vinyl copy and bought it for $40, making it the most expensive individual record I've ever bought. Vinyl records were barely made between 89 and the 00's, so records from that era are always priced at a steep premium.

But don't lose faith in me because of that sticker price, my fellow Dollar Bin Dwellers: I guarantee that you can pick up a CD copy of Goodbye Jumbo for a buck without too much hard looking, and, who am I kidding, all this stuff is available on Spotify anyway.

So I'm putting this message in the box and I'm sending it around the world in a car: Goodbye Jumbo is the late 80's Dollar Bin treasure.

#world party #stephen stills still sucks #the 80s #Youtube

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

World Party - Warfield Theatre, San Francisco, California, September 10, 1990

Over on the Dollar Bin, my brother Nathan paid tribute to the recently departed Karl Wallinger — the multi-instrumentalist Svengali behind World Party. I hadn't listened to much World Party in the past two decades or so, but when I fired up Goodbye Jumbo a few weeks back, I was amazed at how familiar it was, instantly taking me back to Nathan's room in the early 1990s, hearing those unusual sounds for the first time.

Of course, 30+ years later, those sounds don't seem so unusual — Wallinger was a musician who proudly wore his influences on his sleeve, and as I got older, those influences became fairly obvious (as Nathan writes, even our dad was ahead of us in this respect here). But I think World Party served as a nice gateway drug to a lot of worthwhile zones.

So! Here's a nice SBD from the Goodbye Jumbo tour, with Wallinger leading his band through some of his finest tunes, from the Prince-tastic "Private Revolution" to the left-field hit "Put The Message In The Box." You're invited to a World Party.

Karl says: More and more, I just believe that songs are where it’s at. In the ‘90s, I used to get told, “You do too many different styles on your records. You should concentrate on one kind of thing.” And I was just like, “Why would I want to do that?” The attraction is the song, and the song can be any kind of song. There’s all kinds of music that I like. And now I really believe that songs are just amazing things because they go off and they have their own life. They get played at weddings and funerals and births and deaths and everything. Happy moments or moments of doubt or moments where it just seems to be the friend you want. It’s a strange thing, the way they have their own life. I love that about them. They’re like kids. They’ve gone off and experienced more of life, probably, than I have. They’ve been in the background when two people are making love, or they’ve been on a car journey to Alaska. All these scenarios where they’ve been experiencing our lives, as well as we are experiencing them. It blows me away. Songs are incredible things. I love them.

#world party

[cuban-being]

He was a big Beatles fan. Recorded over 10 covers with a couple or more being solo material. #9 Dream was one. I got them all. Their first two albums were great. Staples for me.

#karl wllinger #world party #beatles covers #i'm a little high

[speakers77]

#world party #put the message in the box #song of the day

[themaresnest-dumblr]

Karl Wallinger (Waterboys and World Party)

We'd a feeling all was not right when the forever promised new material never materialised. Been there, done that with the whole 'Tim Smith is recovering' crap we were spoonfed by Cardiacs until his inevitable death.

A sad, sad end to a life so full of promise, but cut short by a brain aneurysm just at a critical moment from which it seemed he never really recovered. Even so, one heck of a shock.

And so concludes one of music's longest running feuds (vs Mike Scott) and that faint hope the two would ever kiss and make up (which, to be honest, was never going to happen given Karl's feelings regarding the recent disgraceful 'reissue' of This Is The Sea containing just about every demo ever made during it so it could be sold for an outrageous price)

As Karl said on 'Kuwait City', oh well ...

And of course, this little tune had a bit of an part in the lore on our little blog over the years ... twice.

Sad to think he's going to only be remembered for that tune the ex-Macc Lads groupie and Take That member did a cover for (largely incidentally so Wallinger would get enough money from the royalties to keep himself and his family with food and a roof over their heads whilst he recovered).

Gone too soon.

Gone far too soon.

P.S. As the other half pointed out, we'd made some World Party stuff way back in the day for Sims 3.

#karl wallinger #the waterboys #world party #cardiacs #rocky horror show

[nwonitro]

Karl Wallinger of World Party 1957-2024

#karl wallinger #world party #80s music #indie music #Youtube