Save Me From Tomorrow

Celebrating Karl Wallinger, 19th October 1957 to 10th March 2024.

I woke up to this terribly sad news. Faced with the choice of trying to articulate a few words of tribute and posting a video or two, or pulling together a personal selection, with some words (when I can find them) to follow in an update later on, I chose the latter.

So, here's forty three minutes and thirty seconds of World Party music. Come back later today for some more words and thoughts.

Rest in peace, Karl.

 

1) Nature Girl (1990)

2) When The Rainbow Comes (1990)

3) She's The One (Live) (2012)

4) S.E.X. (1990)

5) All You Need Is Love (Cover of The Beatles) (2006)

6) Kuwait City (2012)*

7) Ship Of Fools (Live @ Kilburn Empire, London) (1990) 

8) Vanity Fair (1997)

9) I'm So Tired (Cover of The Beatles) (1993)

10) Trouble Down Here (Edit) (1987)

11) Where Are You Going When You Go? (2012)*

 

1987: Ship Of Fools EP: 10

1990: Goodbye Jumbo: 2

1990: Message In The Box EP: 1 

1990: Way Down Now EP: 4

1993: previously unreleased: 5 9

1997: Vanity Fair EP: 8

2006: previously unreleased: 5

2012: Arkeology: 3, 6, 7, 11

* I've no idea when either of these were recorded, but Arkeology was released in 2012.

Save Me From Tomorrow (43:30) (KF) (Mega)

Some More Words And Thoughts (1.30pm GMT)

 

So the first thing I saw was Pete Paphides' tweet from last night. Nothing unusual in Pete picking a song from the archives and sharing it, although his closing thank you to Karl was a little unusual. 

 

But it quickly became clear from the comments that followed that Karl was gone. A few looks around and the tributes had been steadily pouring in overnight. Yet, the usually trusty BBC News website had nothing, right up to the point that I uploaded my post and Dubhed selection earlier this morning.

And then this. 

Note the second sentence: ",,,who also fronted solo project World Party...". 

 

So, the band that Karl formed and led for the best part of 4 decades, which released 5 albums, three of which went Top 40 and one Top 10 in the UK, not forgetting four Top 40 singles and a UK #1 courtesy of a cover version by Robbie Williams, merits little more than a "...who also..." in the opening summary? Much as I recognise The Whole Of The Moon by The Waterboys as a classic, for fuck's sake!

I didn't even know Karl was in The Waterboys at first because frankly I wasn't that bothered by them (or The Whole Of The Moon) at the time. My introduction to Karl was seeing the video for World Party's Private Revolution which had this cool-yet-geeky looking guy in Lennon frames and a shaven headed angel miming along to a retro-future pop song.

Then I heard Ship Of Fools and I was completely sold. I had a white label 12" of this single, though it bore no difference to the standard 12" other than it was missing the cool artwork and labels. But the music was fantastic and, in the flip side's cover of Nowhere Man, the first of a growing number of nods to The Beatles over the course of World Party's recordings. In Oct 2020, the brilliant Albums That Should Exist blog posted an imaginary compilation album (hey, that sounds familiar!) of Karl's takes on 10 Beatles songs. And very good it is too.

Karl's love of The Beatles was never far from the surface but it never felt like pastiche or parody. Although World Party songs were infused with the spirit of Lennon and McCartney, Karl's passion and prodigious talent as a songwriter in his own right always shone through. Other touchstones inevitably included Bob Dylan and The Beach Boys and Kuwait City, Karl's social commentary as surf classic, is jaw-droppingly brilliant.

Which leads to Arkeology, released in 2012. Having taken an enforced break for 5 years due to a brain aneurysm, World Party's run of albums had effectively ground to a halt with Dumbing Up in 2000. Karl was able to resume touring from 2006 but there were sadly to be no more albums of new recordings.

However, Arkeology (subtitled "Diary & Music Collection") was a mammoth 5CD collection housed in a beautiful, ring-bound "any year" diary and containing 70 tracks. Some were previously released on B-sides, some were live versions and covers, many, many had never seen the light of day up to that point. Several examples are included in today's selection.

I was on the fly this morning, wanting to pull together some personal favourites and limited by time to make some very quick choices. That said, I'm very happy with the end result though if I was doing the same tomorrow I would probably come up with an entirely different selection, including Is It Like Today? or World Groove (Do The Mind Guerrilla) for example.

In other words, I felt that the BBC news report - and many others, to be honest - fell far short of capturing just how many hundreds of great songs Karl had written in his lifetime. Not just a few. Hundreds.

Quite the legacy. And from the tributes paid, a wonderfully rich, complex and entertaining human being, to boot.

Bon voyage, Karl.