Thank You World

I'm going out for a few beers tonight with one of my oldest friends. Mark and I go way back: we met over 20 years ago and, as with many bloke relationships, it's a friendship with its roots firmly based in music, beer and football. Over the years we've got drunk in most of Europe's major (and some not so major) cities, as well as on home turf.

I've been under the cosh recently, what with one thing and another (previous and, no doubt, future blogs refer), so it'll be good to slip anchor and do what the male of the species does so well - talking bol**cks. Suffice it to say that stories will be told (and re-told), landlords will be telling us to turn the noise down and carriages will whisk us back to our lodgings sometime before day-break.

It was Mark who introduced me, many years ago, to World Party: he did me a copy of Goodbye Jumbo when it first came out - that C90 then lived in my car for as long as I can remember (I really must thank him for that tonight). Prior to that I'd not really latched on to Karl Wallinger, but have kept an eye on his career thereafter. He's not always had the rub of the green, but, and this isn't true of most troubadours - he's judged by his songwriting peers to be one of the elite. I mention all this because for the last week, whenever my iPod has been on shuffle, World Party have been, pretty much, omnipresent.

So, without further ado (or that Robbie Williams hit), here's a reminder of a couple of Mr. Wallinger's best bits:

Is It Like Today, taken from their 1993 album, Bang!



And, finally, Vanity Fair from 1997's Egyptology - I saw them around this time at Wolverhampton's salubrious Wulfrun Hall. Apologies, in advance, on behalf of the plank who uploaded this clip to YouTube - you'll see why.