Jules De Martino
| Julian De Martino | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
16 July 1969 West Ham, England, United Kingdom |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Musician, singer-songwriter |
| Years active | 1987-present |
Julian "Jules" De Martino (born 16 July 1969) is a British musician and a member of the pop duo The Ting Tings.
Jules was born in West Ham, the son of Anglo-Irish mother, Rosemary (née Middleton), and Italian father, Benito De Martino. Jules has one older sister, Maria. He began playing drums at the age of 13.
When he was 17, Jules was the drummer and songwriter in a band called "Babakoto" (the babakoto is a rare lemur from Madagascar), who once played as a backing group for Bros and released a single at the end of 1987 called "Just to Get By", which failed to chart.
After Babakoto broke up Jules became the lead singer in another indie band called "Mojo Pin", named after the first song on Jeff Buckley's 1994 album Grace. Mojo Pin released two singles, "You" in 1995 and "My Imagination" in 1996.
In March 2001 Katie White's father David White brought in Jules as a songwriter and he wrote four songs for her group TKO (Technical Knock Out).
Jules moved to Manchester and formed a band with Katie White 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 at the end of 2004. Creative differences and the management style of the record label caused them to split up.
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" (亭) and Katie used it as name for the band. One transliteration of the band's name in Japanese is a slang word for penis (). The Ting Tings started by playing for private parties at the Islington Mill arts centre in Salford and their debut album, We Started Nothing, was released on 19 May 2008.
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