Jules De Martino
Encyclopedia
Julian "Jules" de Martino (born 16 July 1969) is a British singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...

, and a member of the pop duo The Ting Tings
The Ting Tings
The Ting Tings are an English music duo comprising Jules de Martino and Katie White . They formed in December 2007 while based at Islington Mill Studios in Salford...

.

Babakoto

When he was 17, Jules was the drummer and song writer in a band called "Babakoto" (the babakoto is a rare lemur
Lemur
Lemurs are a clade of strepsirrhine primates endemic to the island of Madagascar. They are named after the lemures of Roman mythology due to the ghostly vocalizations, reflective eyes, and the nocturnal habits of some species...

 from Madagascar
Madagascar
The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...

) who once played as a backing group for Bros
Bros
Bros were a British band active in the late 1980s and early 1990s, consisting of twin brothers Matt Goss and Luke Goss along with Craig Logan...

 and released a single at the end of 1987 called "Just to Get By" which was in the charts for seven weeks in 1988.

Mojo Pin

After Babakoto broke up Jules became the lead singer in another indie band called "Mojo Pin", named after the first song on Jeff Buckley
Jeff Buckley
Jeffrey Scott "Jeff" Buckley , raised as Scotty Moorhead, was an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He was the son of Tim Buckley, also a musician...

's 1994 album Grace. Mojo Pin released two singles, "You" in 1995 and "My Imagination" in 1996.

TKO

In March 2001 Katie White
Katie White
Katie Rebecca White is an English musician most famous for her work with pop group The Ting Tings. After some success with a girl group punk trio TKO supporting Steps and Atomic Kitten her father David White brought in Jules De Martino to write songs for TKO and Katie and Jules formed The Ting...

's father David White brought in Jules as a songwriter and he wrote four songs for her group TKO (Total Knock Out).

Dear Eskiimo

Jules moved to Manchester and formed a band with Katie White
Katie White
Katie Rebecca White is an English musician most famous for her work with pop group The Ting Tings. After some success with a girl group punk trio TKO supporting Steps and Atomic Kitten her father David White brought in Jules De Martino to write songs for TKO and Katie and Jules formed The Ting...

 and DJ Simon Templeman which they called Dear Eskiimo (often misreported as Dead Eskimo). The name was intended to be as nomadic, tribal and independent as possible. There were already several bands called Eskimo but Jules, who wrote the lyrics, wanted his songs to tell good stories as if in a letter, hence 'Dear Eskiimo' with the odd spelling of 'eskimo" with two 'I"s to make it stand out. Their first performance was as a support between two rock bands but it went well and they were signed up by Mercury Records
Mercury Records
Mercury Records is a record label operating as a standalone company in the UK and as part of the Island Def Jam Motown Music Group in the US; both are subsidiaries of Universal Music Group. There is also a Mercury Records in Australia, which is a local artist and repertoire division of Universal...

 at the end of 2004. Creative differences and the management style of the record label caused them to split up.

The Ting Tings

Jules started a duo in 2007 with Katie White on vocals, guitar and bass drum and Jules on vocals, drums, bass, guitar, and keyboards. They started writing songs together and doing short concerts. Katie was working in a boutique with a Chinese girl called "Ting Ting," which sounds like Mandarin Chinese for "band stand" (
Chinese pavilion
.Chinese Pavilions are covered structures without surrounding walls and are a traditional part of Chinese architecture. While often found within temples, pavilions are not exclusively religious structures...

) and Katie used it as name for the band. One transliteration of the band's name in Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

 is a slang
Slang
Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...

 word for penis (wikt:ちんちん). The Ting Tings started by playing for private parties at the Islington Mill arts centre in Salford
City of Salford
The City of Salford is a city and metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It is named after its largest settlement, Salford, but covers a far larger area which includes the towns of Eccles, Swinton-Pendlebury, Walkden and Irlam which apart from Irlam each have a population of over...

 and their debut album, We Started Nothing
We Started Nothing
We Started Nothing is the debut album by the English New Wave duo The Ting Tings. It was released by the Columbia Label Group on 19 May 2008 in the United Kingdom. The US edition has a different cover image in several background colours....

, was released on 19 May 2008.
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