Written the day of the World Party celebration of Karl’s life and music in London. I can’t be there, so this is my own small tribute.
I was maybe 15 or 16 when I first heard Karl Wallinger… Back then, the main characters in my musical world came straight out of the pages of Rolling Stone: Peter Gabriel, Sting, the big names with the big records. Karl, along with guys like Matt Johnson of The The, were more like the B and C string players I followed on the side.
Karl always seemed a little hard to figure out… Those dark glasses felt standoffish to me as a kid, like he didn’t really want to be known. I loved his music… but I don’t think I understood the man. And he didn’t feel like somebody who wanted to be understood.
What I didn’t understand at the time… was how deeply those songs would stay with me. I had no idea his writing would shape the rest of my life.
World Party’s first album, Private Revolution, was exactly the kind of record that lights a fire in a young weird from Central Illinois in the mid 80’s. It’s worldly… It’s about the human condition… It made you feel like the world’s problems were obvious to anyone who would take the time to look.
And then there was the third track… “Ship of Fools.”
“Avarice and greed are gonna drive you over the endless sea.”
I’ve known what the word avarice means for the nearly 40 years since that album came out, thanks to Karl. (I think I learned my vocabulary words in song lyrics.) And the longer I look at the world around me, the more relevant it becomes. Avarice is the core human condition right now. Karl was howling it into my ear as he was singing about it decades ago…
I did look to see if this word was modern. I should know weird words like this come from latin. A google search reveals that the word comes from the Latin avaritia and made its way into English in the Middle Ages. It’s one of the seven deadly sins, a warning that’s been around for centuries. Humans have always struggled with it… But Karl took that ancient warning and put it in a song that a teenager could hum, and somehow I have never forgot it.
If Private Revolution was the fire, Goodbye Jumbo was the record that grew up alongside me. Almost everything on it is profound in a quieter, more human way. It’s less about fixing the world and more about being a person in it. This is not that post, so I am going to refrain from my life long love affair with that album.
Here’s what I’ve come to believe… Life has an arc… and it comes back around.
You start out fiery as a kid and a teenager. In your twenties, you turn introspective as you learn more about how the world actually works. Then, eventually, you become more at peace with yourself, and once you’re there, you finally have room to turn back toward the world.
That’s when it hits you… All that angry young man enthusiasm that seemed a little lover that top at 18, when you were sure you knew the world’s problems, wasn’t all naive. Some of it was core truth. And a lot of those core truths were sitting right there on a World Party CD lyric sheet the whole time, waiting for any of us to read them (or listen).
It’s funny looking back… The headliners had the best studios and the best session players in the world. Peter Gabriel was singing “In Your Eyes” with an incredible band behind him, while Matt Johnson was making his first solo record more or less on his own in a basement.
But the more retrospective I’ve become, the clearer it is that those B and C string guys were singing about the really important things. And honestly, how do you build a pop career when you’re singing about avarice? That’s a tough sell… It may be exactly why they never became the biggest stars, and exactly why their songs have lasted for me.
Karl Wallinger, Matt Johnson, and a few others I’ll probably add here someday were the beginning of my cultural education. They taught me so much, and they’ve stayed with me to this day.
A friend of mine saw Lou Reed in concert not long before he died. I told him that must have been the greatest thing ever. He looked at me, completely serious, and said, “No, it was kind of bad. I wish I hadn’t seen him.”
That stuck with me… Do you want to meet your heroes… or see them? I still want to see a lot of artists, but maybe both sides need to know when to stop. Some performers get a long run, and honestly, Rod Stewart? Probably not going to see him.
Karl was different… He died too soon, in March 2024. Over the last couple of years I watched plenty of clips from his later shows, and he was still relevant. His voice was there… His mind was always there… He was still putting on a show, still the same serious man, still a great musician, a storyteller and a profound poet. I’m still kicking myself for not making that effort. Glen Hansard… Same type of fail. He was too young. I should have saw him on the “Once” concerts. I
f you have a chance to see your idols singing live, do it!
When a once-in-a-lifetime show happens, and I am not there, I always end up moping around all day with regret, and tonight stings… I’d fly to London for one show and fly home that same night, and it would feel perfectly normal. That’s what travel is for me: the experience.
(I remember another one that sucked to miss… Kate Bush’s London shows back in 2014, and I still think about it. Tonight goes right next to that one.)
As I got older, Karl became more entwined with my own story, so his death hurts even more. Now all I have is the music. Private Revolution is a great start, but Goodbye Jumbo is the sweet spot. I still love his last studio album, Dumbing Up as well. They are all worth checking out.
She’s all that soundtrack? I think that was Karl. Just looked, its
Tonight, the members of World Party and their friends are playing his songs in London. I won’t be in the room… But I’ll be listening at home, and I’ll be thinking about a kid who had no idea a word like avarice would stick with me today.
Averice. Know that word in your daily life.