#87, 88, and 90 The Party (+ World Party bonus)

We've got a few cards to hit today. In a first for the blog, we'll be jumping order a little bit because of a hiccup in the 1991 MusiCards checklist. (We're skipping unrelated #89 and will backtrack to it next post.) Plus-- unrelated to the checklist order misstep?-- there's an error variation mixed in with this group of cards, so heads up.

For a visual aid, here's this Pop portion of the (mostly alphabetical) checklist with my added notations:

84 Nelson
85 New Edition
86.1 Maxi Priest (Yes, this card should be #86.)
86.2 The Party (Whoops, no; while this card is numbered #86 on the back, that's an error. A later variation of the card corrects the number to 90. This makes it tricky to sort a master set of 1991 MusiCards; Like, do you sort this card in at #86 or #90?)
87 The Party (Their 1st card out of 3)
88 The Party (Their 2nd card out of 3)
89 Poco (Hey, why the heck did they pop Poco in the middle of The Party's run? Weird!)
90 The Party (Yes, there is only one MusiCard #90 and it is in fact The Party's 3rd card, though it's "out of order" in the checklist, and that same card also has an error variation that mistakenly has the wrong number [#86] on the back but is otherwise the same as the only card that's actually numbered #90 on the back [though that card probably should have been #89, but Poco snuck in at #89 instead for some reason].)
91    Lionel Richie
92    Lionel Richie

Does that all make sense? Or did I just make it more confusing than it needs to be? One thing that's clear is that whoever it was at Pro Set's creative department whose job it was to order the individual cards into number was in over their head! It's like they had a good checklist in a box of index cards, but the fool tripped on the way to the design department and those index cards that were in logical order got shuffled around just enough to the point where if anyone bothers to actually take a good look at the checklist, they'll inevitably come to the conclusion that whomever it was at Pro Set's creative department whose job it was to order the individual cards into number was in over their head.

Ok, enough smack talk about the MusiCards production team's checklist guy. (I wonder if it was the same guy who thought it'd be a good idea to have an odd shaped photo area in the design, and not allow for any flexibility such as swapping around the design elements any further than the choice between vertical and horizontal, or by mercifully allowing any part of the photo poking over those odd-shaped borders. I can't help but feel like they shot themselves in the foot. Maybe I'm just being cocky, but I'd love to take a time machine back to 1990 when these cards were being designed and use my pocket phone/camera/computer to convince them that I'm a magician from the future or whatever so they'll let me run the MusiCards project, and I'm not saying that I'd for-sure lead the team to heights warranting a follow-up set... but damn it, I'd at least run a tighter ship with the order of my checklist!) 

(And this is not even the worst of the checklist order's several blunders! That honor has got to go to the one random hair metal band smack dab within the R&B-and-Rap portion of the set.. but we'll worry about that down the road at card #114.)

We'll hit that fake #86 in a moment, but for now here's MusiCard #87:

Funny thing, this card gave me a minor "mind blown" moment because I have never heard of the group called The Party other than vaguely knowing they're in the 1991 MusiCard set. But it turns out I've been searching eBay for the person on the left's autograph every day for the past year!

Reading the back, I was like.. "Wait a minute, (first person mentioned) Deedee Magno [Hall] is a voice actor on a favorite animated show of mine, Steven Universe." Then I looked it up, and yep. it's the same person. What a trip: Pearl, the Crystal Gem, appears in the 1991 MusiCards set! Wow. I won't blather on too much here, but I talked more about my Steven Universe stuff in an underperforming post on Baseball Card Breakdown last year. I've since snagged a few more autographs I'd been targeting from that set (chiefly Amethyst, Garnett, and Lion), but Pearl (Deedee) is still a need.

But back to her days as a fledgeling musician, here's card #88:

Per the outfits, this pic is from the same photoshoot as the previous card. I can't really tell if Pro Set manufactured that blurry column on the left to artificially make the photo work better with the design or if there was actually a thing there during the shoot.

The back photo here is the same as that of the previous card, cropt differently. And I still don't have much of an idea what this group's music sounds like, but hey, the quintet's members are all featured on the only album they had released at that point. Good for them. lol

Skipping #89 here because it's a different act, as previously mentioned, but then here's The Party back for more (in the same clothes) at #90:

Either they rocked trademark outfits a lot back then or else they really got a lot of mileage out of this photoshoot. All their photos in this post-- front and back-- all feature the other lady (Tiffini Hale) in the same distinctive hat, and there seems to be a big red jacket that a couple of the guys take turns in.

Of course I had to check out some tunes from these guys, and lo and behold there's yet another shot from this photoshoot on their Spotify homepage:

The above (apparently reversed) image wasn't used on a MusiCard, but it's very similar to the front of card #87.

Anyways, card #90 is technically the rarest card you'd need to find if you wanted to put together a full set of series 1 MusiCards (since the correctly numbered card wasn't actually included in series 1 packs). But since The Party don't have much of a mainstream following today, there isn't really any premium on the card's typical price, far as I can tell. If it was like Tom Petty, Ozzy Osbourne, or somebody else popular, a scarce variation like that might've been a bigger deal.

Oh, ok.. now we get some context. Turns out, these young performers were cast members on a late-80s Mickey Mouse Club reboot that were then thrown together as a musical act by a marketing department or something, Monkees-style, and the name The Party ("Positive Attitude Reflects Today's Youth") was the winning entry from a contest to name them.

The Party - "In My Dreams" (a Dokken cover) ...the most successful of their few singles to chart.

That powerful Disney influence behind the scenes likely played a part in them being granted 3 cards in this set. Wikipedia also tells me they cranked out a CD per year for four years, 1990-1993, before splitting, later regrouping in the mid 2010s and are still occasionally active, doing a handful of live performances in 2023. Sadly, however, Tiffini wasn't involved in the reunion, as she battled schizophrenia for years before a cardiac arrest lead to her death in 2021.

VARIATION ALERT

Here's the same front again, but it's the error card, numbered 86 on the back:

Same card other than the number in the corner.

The Party toured as openers with Taylor Dayne and then Vanilla Ice back when that meant something, and that helps give you an idea what to expect with their music. Honestly, I couldn't get through any of their songs I tried to check out while drafting this post. In their defense, I'm clearly not their target demographic. I don't recall ever hearing their stuff back then-- like, when I was in their demographic-- so there's no sentimental attachment for me either. Regardless, it's been interesting learning the group's backstory, and again, the Steven Universe connection was a trip for me to discover.

CUSTOM CORNER

This is already a longer post for the blog, but I wanted to squeeze in a custom, too.

The Party might not be my speed, but World Party on the other hand is a band I really like. I was heartbroken hearing that frontman Karl Wallinger passed away just a couple months ago at age 66. The band had been inactive for nearly a decade, and he had dealt with serious medical issues dating back to a brain aneurysm in early 2001, but fans hoped that the songs he had been tinkering on for the past several years would wind up as a World Party comeback album soon, but alas. Perhaps Karl's estate will be able to work up a posthumous farewell album from the new material he left behind.

After making a name for himself helping out in The Waterboys in the mid 80s (see the tremendous "Whole of the Moon"), Wallinger spread his wings as World Party in 1986, scoring a minor hit with "Ship of Fools" off their debut, Private Revolution. I remember catching the video for "Put the Message in the Box" from their second album, Goodbye Jumbo, a couple times on MTV circa 1990, but it was hearing "Way Down Now" on the radio a couple years after the fact that really caught my attention. 

World Party - "Way Down Now"

Those minor hits in the late 80s and 1990 would seem to make World Party a strong candidate for inclusion in the 1991 MusiCards set, but nope.. not even in the UK edition. Bummer.

1993's Bang! was another banger, and I dug the cut "Is It Like Today?" enough to pick up the CD after hearing it on the radio a few times (and it's still an all-time favorite of mine). Egyptology (1997) made less of a splash, but included the song "She's the One", which went on to be covered by Robbie Williams, going all the way to #1 on the British pop charts. (Robbie was a dick who sometimes falsely claimed to have written the song himself, but the royalties helped a lot when Karl was recovering from the aneurysm, unable to work.) Dumbing Up (2000) ended up as World Party's final studio album, though fans got a nice treat in 2012 with Arkeology, a big collection (5 discs) of unreleased songs, live stuff, and covers (including some tight Beatles renditions). It really sucks that we lost him too early.

World Party - "Is It Like Today?"

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That'll do it for this post. Please let me know in the comments if you've got any thoughts to share regarding either parties covered here today. Thanks!