You’re in Old Navy, a coffee shop, your job, in your car; everywhere you go, you’ll hear the Ting Tings playing somewhere. You find yourself humming the riff to “Great DJ” or the chorus to “That’s Not My Name”; Their songs are stuck in your head everywhere you go. To some people they’re newly venerated pop demi-gods that have come out of their cult status (which didn’t last long, mind you). To others, they’re a band that’s in an iod commercial who’s songs you can’t get away from. If you’re the latter, then you probably haven’t actually listened to the album enough to even understand why they are being played so much. They’re fucking good pop music. Yeah, that word carries different weight here in America, but in a place where bands like New Order or Arctic Monkeys could be considered pop, perhaps it’s not such a bad thing (even though I don’t enjoy the latter). In this article, you’ll hear just that: this band is not about gimmick at all (you can chalk that up to the American money making machine). If you’re not a fan, hopefully this’ll help you realize The Ting Tings are actually two artists that are finally getting their due. They’re the perfect example of the duality of being actual artists that gain popularity and dealing with the almost inevitable compromises of integrity that seem to happen to most of the people in their situation (which they are thankfully avoiding).
Love the style...
Katie:
Right! You sound like our dear friend, Bill. That his mission in life; to kind of, get a place to facilitate artists. So they can get inspired by meeting other artists. That’s a great thing to do.
Chris:
Is it Islington?
Katie:
Islington Mill, yeah.
Chris:
Whenever I read that in another interview, I was very happy because people are actually doing it and it’s not [necessarily] a bad idea.
Jules
They often do a lot of, kind of, collaborations with other similar types of set ups in different places, like: Berlin they go to, France, Scotland. They kind of collaborate with young artist groups there, as well. At the moment Bill’s got- not a B & B, but a place where go and do an exchange sort of thing. They can stay there for a week and study and sort of mingle with the artists.
Chris
That’s great. I saw you on One on One or Oxygen…
[A look of confusion hides across their face]
Chris:
Anyway, you played SOS [an AWESOME R&B /funk band from the 80s]
Katie
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Chris
No offense, but I couldn’t believe it. Specifically, English people.
Katie
Really?
Jules De Martino & Katie White
Chris
No offense, though. The more I heard your music [especially] live, I can definitely hear the influence. The bit of funk you guys have.
Katie
Yeah, we kind of like all that [bands like] Chic and that kind of thing.
Jules
SOS Band… that was a pretty good song there, ah? It’s an amazing track; the original. Beats International covered it. Have you heard that version?
Chris
No, I haven’t.
Jules
What’s his name….
Katie
Fatboy Slim.
Jules
Fatboy Slim. He was in a band before called Beat International and he had done a version of SOS Band’s “Just Be Good to Me” and made it a huge hit in Europe and then it comes over here and Norman-
Katie
-Cook.
Jules
Cook, yeah. We kind of do a version where it’s halfway between the cover and the original.
Katie
‘Cause the original-
Jules
-the original doesn’t have a rap in it like we do.
Chris
We were curious as to why you guys don’t have a backup band. Do you ever wish you had one?
Katie
Well, we just got off stage and we’re exhausted, yeah. Well, when we started this band it was just the two of us. You know, we’ve been in bands with more members and it doesn’t necessarily make you a better band, ya know? It seems to suck energy out of you, you know. We’ve been in bands with like 4 or 5 other people and this has got just soo much more chemistry and energy. What are we gonna do? Pay five session musicians to go: “You’re shit, you’re shit. We’re taking your money.” I just think that it’s very interesting with two ‘cause you’ve got nowhere to hide; you’ve gotta give it everything.You have to really have a full on performance to really keep people interested. So, um, we like it ad two. We always kind of make hard for ourselves, but we really like it.
Chris
My partner [Adam] actually had to leave, but he was wondering if you ever danced in front of the mirror. Apparently, he likes the way you dance.
Ting 1 & Ting 2
Jules
I honestly don’t. I can’t do that. [to Katie] You could when you’re young, don’t you?
Katie
Yeah, when I was a little girl but no. I hate seein’ myself the way I perform, but I’m not the loudest person in the room, I’m not such an extrovert, It kinda comes out on stage and I don’t have a loud voice so kind of I have to wind myself to get the noise out. It’s the only way I could really perform. So, I call it like I’m being chased by a wasp. When I see I’m like:”Oh, how embarassing.” But people seem to like it. But, yeah, I don’t do the moves that I do on stage in front of the mirror. I would’ve danced to Madonna once in the mirror as a child.
Chris
Do you guys ever feel [your popularity is] strange? I saw you guys go from Glastonbury backstage to the Peel stage and now, literally, you’re one of the biggest bands in the UK and here [see the amount of sold out shows they have on this tour]. Do you ever get a chance to sit and go, “Oh wait. What the fuck just happened?”
Jules
Maybe a bit strange. It’s a battle. People don’t realize that wen we done this band we did a lot of artwork, we do the art on our sleeves, we threw house parties, we do our own single designs, we do our own 12”, and produced our own record in our own (kind of) bedroom studio. And when people start to like it, it creates a lot of problems. In a way that: you start traveling and people start buying your records, you sign a record deal, you’ve got management all of a sudden ;cause you gotta be in all these different places at all these different times. Before you know it, and it’s literally overnight, I mean you do a year’s touring it goes like [snaps his fingers] that because, we went over about four times last year and for us it’s like: “Oh, my god, China, Japan…” We’re seein all these peoples and it’s just like one big trip. You don’t realize who all are there. All of the sudden, there all these people involved in what you do looking after you supposedly. That means there’s people in the kitchen. With art, Ya know, with any form of art sometimes the most simple things are the most powerful things. When we define our art… some of the things we do with our audience is we give them paint and we get them to design some of our sleeves. We got such a reaction with that and some of that paintwork and artwork we’ve got on some of our record is just amazing because we’ve let people see the band, feel the energy. Give ‘em paint, brushes, toothbrushes, electric toothbrushes with pens, and they’re trying ti draw with them or we’d tie people’s arms up with six people, so that when one of them draws it pulls the others back and all this sort of shapes.
Chris
Oh, really?
Jules
All that is the freedom of what we do and on the other side is where people say: “You can’t do this gig.” “Well, why’s that?” “They don’t have a deal with your record label” or “They’re not in with your record label”. You know, that whole kind of politic behind the bureaucracy of the music industry. That’s the battle for us. We’re totally anti- that whole sort of thing. We like to do what we did tonight; say, we play in front of 50 people… there’s no difference. You know, we’re doing 55,000 people in the UK in the Summer and 20,000 people last year. It makes no difference to us. I guess the only difference it makes when you play in a place like this is, it’s hotter. It’s sweaty and the people are right close to you. You know, you get your hair all down and you let it go. When you place the sort of windy, open arenas or you know like, a festival stage, the audience is much further away. And it’s sometimes a bit more difficult to reach out to them. You’re playing hard, but they’re like: “Where’s the Ting Tings?” And that can be slightly frustrating.
Chris
So, do you guys have any hfkglkhj?
Katie
Pardon?
Chris
Do you guys have any art shows planned… I read about the Ting Ting nights [theywould have parties and play everytime their songs got above a certain amount of plays on myspace. This is also where the crazy paintings would be done].
Katie
Yeah, we did one about three weeks ago, didn’t we? In Manchester… We whited out the room, pull like 10” sleeves on the wall everywhere. We kind of sent an invite out on our myspace and invited like a vast load of people to email us [to] come to this party. And we like dressed them all in our big ass track suits, white ones (they gave em to us for free), so everybody looked the same. It’s really weird… ‘cause normally, you kind of work your audience out. You shouldn’t be, but as a human, you sort of do. You gotta kind of, ya know-
Chris
See who’s out there.
Katie
Yeah. You couldn’t even see that. They all just kind of looked like kind of, we have this term in the UK called Scullies (sp?) like Trackies. ‘Cause they’re all like… [Insert cute and funny noise here]. We even wore and we all looked the same. It was really good ‘cause-
Jules
It was like a blank canvas. A completely white canvas.
Katie
Yeah. And we started to play and people started to draw and then it turned into this huge paint fight.
Jules
Amazing.
Katie
People were coming out and it shocked us because we was like “this is gonna be good” and it was the most memorable show we’ve ever done. Which kind of warmed our hearts, ya know. We’re like a year ad a half in and we’re signed to a really big record company, and all the stuff to be a big band, but we actually dod one of our best gigs a few weeks ago.
Jules
In a little kind of place.
Katie
Yeah. It’s so memorable and people wouldn’t ‘ave forgotten that gig when they’re old. Just because it was such a surreal experience; everybody lookin’ the same, covered in paint and they completely just let go. I had paint in my mouth, my eyeballs, I had to wear a wig ‘cause it was all in my hair. At one point, I had to stop playing ‘cause there was too much paint on my guitar; I couldn’t play it. But yeah, we do stuff like that. We’re hoping to do something like that in the states one day. Maybe in New York or LA or something like that.
Chris
Let me know when you do.
Katie
Yeah. You’re invited. It was weird ‘cause I went on stage and for like, the first half of the song I was like: “Don’t like this. I’ve got paint in my eyeball. I cam’t sing properly.” And then as I got more covered in paint I started to really enjoy it.
There’s a lot of debate about whether or not gaining popularity is selling out. A sell-out is someone that gains popularity and loses touch with their fans; as well as, possibly completely losing their audience and not giving a shit. That’s not the Ting Tings. I could tell that if these two were to lose their fans, it wouldn’t be the same for them.
[I’d like to apologies if I was being a bit overdramatic with my prologue. I’m currently on a Cure and Joy Division binge... holding back the tears.]
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