Tom Tom Club is still going

When one hears the name Tom Tom Club, one might think of Wordy Rappinghood, that strange tune, with lyrics in a not existing language.  Well, that group exists of two members from the great band Talking Heads: Chris and Tina Frantz, who are married together. Jonty Skrufff talked with them, over back in the days, and sampling.

By DjBroadcast

Jonty is curious why the band still exists. The answer is pretty simple, Tina explains. “Well, I try to get it retired all the time, but people keep asking us. And everybody that plays in the Club keeps loving it. It’s a seven piece band with an ever changing team.” Only Victoria Clamp and Bruce Martin are with the band for more than 20 years.

So the story started out from one half of the Talking Heads, and Wordy Rappinghood was the first album the two lovers made. Chris: “It was supposed to be produced by Lee Perry on Jamaica. We booked a studio but after three weeks he still didn’t show up. Finally one of the people that was working in the studio, Steven Stanley, produced the track. I was dead nervous the day before and got really drunk. The track is produced with me having a huge hangover.” Tina adds that there was no band to play with. “We had only one Akai sampling machine and it could sample only ten seconds. Next to that we only had a Prophet 5 as the most exiting piece of gear. We used only factory presets because the sounds were so new anyway, there was no need to tweek them.” During their studio sessions Grace Jones, Sly and Robbie where their neighbours by the way.

Next to Wordy Rappinghood you might know the Tom Tom Club from Genious of Love, which at this moment is the most sampled track, probably best known for Mariah Carey’s version, Fantasy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JNG-bOYBJI Tina: “Ah, and at the end she does a complete chorus. She’s a great singer!” Next to that the track is sampled by Tupac, Redman, Annie and Mark Morrison. And of course many, many others. For the Tom Tom Club project there never existed long term plans. “It was just a side project” Chris explained. “We never thought we would be talking about it today.” Tina adds “Brian Eno was abashed about the music.” Later, when he heard the handclaps on Genious of Love where done by Sly and Robbie he decided to come back to the Talking Heads again.

Musical inspiration came also from the New York nightlife. They visited CBGB’s on a regular basis, where they’d met Debby Harris, The Ramones, Patti Smith and Sid Vicious. But they’ve also been to the Paradise Garage, which influenced their later sound. Tina: “We were into disco, we visited the discotheques, learned the dances, we where into the funky side of things. And also, people didn’t realized we’d listen to afrobeat at home. Fela Kuti, Manu Dibango, that kind of things. We think it was a part of our personal culture at that time.”

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