Is It Too Late Now?

I was driving in the car this morning with my 8-year-old daughter. A homemade collection of World Party’s greatest hits was playing on the stereo and mid-way through the song “Is It Too Late” (the opening track from the band’s 1990 L.P. Goodbye Jumbo) a sudden declaration erupted from the back seat: “I really like this song!”

“Yeah,” I thought, “this is a really good song; like much of the stuff done by this much under-rated and now almost forgotten band.”

I tracked down this video for the song. It’s a stripped-down, three-piece live performance at Tower Records on Sunset Strip from a few years ago. This post-aneurysm performance by World Party maestro Karl Wallinger and friends doesn’t quite capture the nuance, compositional depth and fine production of the original studio recording, but it is entertaining and serves as good reminder of the band’s affirmative spark in the face of the some of the dire realities of modern existence.

Of course, besides the catchy hook, I can see the appeal of this song to my third-grader – with its plea to save the elephants and all. (She’s currently torn between wanting to save wildlife and play in the WNBA when she grows up. As for that, she has plenty of time: It’s not too late.)

A Pertinent Question ...

Once you look past the rather uninspired artistry of this early ’90s’ music video, it’s not too difficult to appreciate the song as a quintessential example of what pop music could (and should) be: upbeat and buoyant, while also meaningful and thought-provoking. In fact, this is “spiritual” music no matter what perspective you hear it from. Besides being an obvious fan of The Beatles, World Party principal Karl Wallinger is one of the under-appreciated stand-out musical forces of my generation – this being just one of his many memorable tunes. (I recently learned that he suffered an aneurysm about a decade ago and has done only limited musical work since.)


Above was one of two official video releases for “Is It Like Today?” – the better of the two, in fact!  But this is a live-in-the-studio rendition from 1993 that, though a bit bare, is still powerful nonetheless: