IT'S MY PARTY

Not only are world party still around - according to band linchpin KARL WALLINGER, they're back eating dinner with "people in suits".

As I put down the phone in the HOT PRESS office, another staff member approaches me. "Who was that you were interviewing?" he asks. "Karl
Wallinger from World Party." "Oh," comes the reply. "Are they still around?"

This exchange neatly encapsulates the downward slide of the band's profile since their halcyon days of the early '90s, when hit albums like Goodbye Jumbo and Bang! placed them at the forefront of the contemporary scene. Bang!, for example, was only kept off the UK no. 1 slot by REM.

Wallinger's band, though, are still in rude health, and will be playing Dublin's Mean Fiddler on 3rd June, before heading to London for the Finsbury Park Fleadh the following Saturday. Although they played in Belfast "very early on", Wallinger points out that this is their first headline gig south of the border. They did, however, perform at the first Trip to Tipp, an occasion which was memorable enough.

"We were transported to the gig in this rickety old bus straight out of a Flann O'Brien novel," Wallinger recalls. "Then when we were playing our set some guy fell off the roof of the stadium. Apparently he wasn't seriously hurt but, I mean it's a LONG way down.

"I think one of the weirdest experiences of my life was looking out at 30,000 people and seeing them all look left simultaneously. We were standing there going 'It's us! Look! Over here!'," he continues, giggling.

At the time, World Party were signed to Ensign Records, which was also home to Sinead O'Connor and The Waterboys, the band with whom Wallinger
first made his name. The Ensign association is now at an end, largely die to what Karl refers to as the "really appalling lack of support" for the band's most recent album, last year's Egyptology.

"The people I signed to were a completely different bunch of people to the ones I ended up with," he says. "I was also annoyed by the deceitful nature of things. The same people who would go, 'Oh Karl, this is the greatest thing you've ever done,' would then do nothing with it."

Despite his frustrations, Wallinger relates all this stuff with wry humour. He hopes to have a new album out by the end of this year, and, as he points out, "We're starting to get taken out for dinner by people in suits again, so that's a good sign."

His own brand of idiosyncratic pop music has also been distinguished by a consistent concern with ecological matters, most notably on Goodbye Jumbo.
Is this still an abiding passion of his?

"Oh, yeah," he replies emphatically. "I always made the point that I wasn't taking part in some on-off bandwagon-jumping exercise. It's something that's not going to go away. It will just go on and on until, hopefully, we change people's minds. "Sometimes you're hopeful, and at other times " he trails off. "I signed a fax the other day, "Yours in anticipation of nuclear war between India and Pakistan'."

A man for whom the phrase "a musician's musician" could have been invented, Wallinger has always had a reputation as a perfectionist, spending long
weeks and months in his home studio agonising over his recordings. "Sometimes I think that it isn't as true in reality as my image perhaps suggests," he says. "I actually like being spontaneous, but for one reason or another we don't always work quickly. Sometimes that might have to do with the fact that I don't have the songs written when we go into the studio! But to be honest, the technical side of recording bores the arse off me!"

So he won't be lending his knob-twiddling talents to any other acts, then?

"One record company breathing down my neck is quite enough, thank you. Although I am helping my niece's band from Sussex. They're really good," he
enthuses without revealing their name.

Does he feel like a veteran of the scene whenever his niece comes to him for help with her rock'n'roll career? "Oh, you know, I think the onslaught of time cannot be resisted!" he says with mock melodrama. "Actually, I'm the youngest of my family by quite a long way, so to my nieces and nephews I'm like the 'cool uncle', the missing link between their parents and their own generation."

Mention of his family brings us to a final question: as a native of Prestatyn in North Wales, what does Wallinger make of the current Welsh revival spearheaded by Cerys of Catatonia, Super Furry Animals et al?

He puts on his mock-serious voice again: "I think that we have to explore all corners of the world for talent...even Wales. Ooops. That's me unable to go home for the next few years (laughter). "As long as music is good, I don't care where it comes from . That's what I like about The Verve, for instance. They aren't afraid of passion or of a direct involvement with their audience." Which, come to think of it, isn't a bad description of World Party either.

World Party play The Mean Fiddler, Dublin on Wednesday 3rd June 1998.