At university, way back in the Mid-Eighties during the first term of my second year, I had a rather singular seminar Literature tutor named Jeremy Tambling. He guided us with expert care through a course about the Nineteenth Century Novel, still for me the absolute peak period of this wonderful artform. On the way, he introduced me, and several others within the class, to the joys of Post-Structuralism. To Foucault, Althusser and other critical titans. To Bakhtin as well. I'm eternally grateful to him. He taught me a lot that I've fed on ever since.
Rather less fortunately, his class, to my eternal shame, led to my head being turned to the considerable charms of a sweet American brunette in the group named Lynn. This is turn led me to damage and badly bruise the heart of my lovely girlfriend at the time, for which I have no excuse, and still upbraid myself all this time later. I try not to think about it frankly. I shouldn't have done that to her. I just shouldn't. I was a proper bastard.
Fortunately she forgave me and took me back. And we went on to have a number more happy years together before we eventually were virtually obliged by circumstances to go our separate ways and brave the world without each other. Something we both found very difficult in different ways for a number of years
But focus, Bruce. Because this post is not about Jeremy Tambling, Lynn, the cute American brunette, or indeed about my first and dear true love and how I hurt her. It's about Jeremy Tuplin and his new album Orville's Discotheque just out. I've made acquaintance with this Jeremy too. He played the Cobalt Studios in Newcastle, the last live gig I witnessed back in February 2020 before the curtains were closed and the doors shut, and I was obliged, along with much of the rest of the world, to retreat into isolated existence in those incredible Lockdown months. That world and character and perspective changing experience from which we are only now emerging, if we ever really will.
I spent a lot of time with Jeremy and his band that evening. They couldn't have been friendlier or more accommodating to me and they played a blinding set. I don't take this friendliness and approachability for granted with musicians if I go up to them before or after they play their sets. I'm naturally slightly shy myself and they've, not unnaturally, got other things on their minds apart from talking to people they've never met. But Jeremy and his band really couldn't have been nicer and I found the chats we had that evening really instructive.
For Jeremy is one of those best of things. A young man with wisdom, far, far beyond his years. This is quite clear from any exposure to any one of his records. He's got something to say and he says it very eloquently each and every time he puts out a record.
It sometimes takes me a while to warm to them and fully clutch them to my heart, because they're dense, like a good novel or a set of short stories. But I'm generally determined to do so because I like the guy so much and think he's such a talent. Orville's Discotheque is his fourth album and it strikes me as Jeremy becoming more his own man and transcending his influences in a similar way to how Baxter Dury has over the course of his career in a similarly determined fashion.
At the time I met him and chatted to him in 2020, he was fresh from the recording of his second album Pink Mirror . His approach to his art struck me as persona driven. This is one of the great British Pop traditions and I saw him at the end of a line that contained such greats as Ray Davies, Marc Bolan, Kevin Ayers, David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Jarvis Cocker, Brett Anderson and Luke Haines. Phew! He didn't seem to mind. I also mentioned Jack Thackray and he didn't seem to mind that either.
That's a pretty daunting and remarkable list but I didn't feel it out of place to place him there because he had all the louche charm, talent and intelligence to deserve comparison it. He deserves it still. Orville's Discotheque is as fine a record as Pink Mirror but it's one that's content to inhabit its own skin in a similar way in which Seventies celebrity impressionist Mike Yarwood used to say at the end of each show, 'and this is me.'
There's something rather wonderful about his transformation like a butterfly boldly chipping its way from its chrysalis. To do the record full justice I can do no better than quote the man's Bandcamp page, which describes the nature of the end result far better than I can. It's a literary one but goes back way further in time than the Eliot, Bronte and Dickens novels, we discussed in my University days under Tambling's tutelage while I, devoid of shame and decency, tried to attract the cute brunette's attention and admiration. Wanker!
Meanwhile, thirty five years and more down the line in Orville's Discotheque, something is stirring. The record is best listened to from the start as I just mentioned, to cotton on to its concept, and refer to that Bandcamp page for it's narrative thread: 'An Orphic Tale, Orville's Discotheque and its multitude of characters - Orville (loosely Orpheus, Eugenie, (loosely Eurydice), Hermes, Hades and Persephone, - takes inspiration from Greek Mythology, but is also very much a story unto itself. Set in a world slightly left of reality, the record tells the story of a flawed disco-enthused anti-hero and his romantic travails. Possibly taking place in the 70's. the 80s, present day or maybe far into the future, Sad disco, dark disco, devilish dico, whatever he chooses to call it. Orville's Discotheque is a quirky underworld, or dancefloor, for you to step on the dancefloor and slide through.'
Jeremy is there on the cover, resplendent in his Disco gear. Like some dancefloor Lothario, dancefloor Jesus. It looks great on the wall of my local record shop. This is the kind of record we need in 2023. One that allows us to dream. He is the kind of Pop Star we need. One who dares to. Come back to Newcastle Jeremy. So we can have another chat. Your imagination and bravery are something else. All power to that imagination, that bravery. And those elbows.
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