The Wiseguys — The Antidote. Brief story behind the album

In the early nineties, 20-year-old Paul Eve (DJ Regal) worked in a London audio/video exchange shop with a huge warehouse. Theo Keating (Touche) walked into the shop with a voucher. Eve gave him twenty boxes of discounted records, and after work they listened to what one had sold to the other. As DJs, Theo and Paul had the same idea: they went through all the famous records in search of unique samples. And as part of the duo Wiseguys, they both invented a competitive game: to include in their own collage tracks only those pieces that had never been heard before: “There was so much stuff that we found during the making of the first album that we had to lose, because by the time we got around to releasing the [first] LP, someone else ended up using it on their track. That was the thing about the whole process, back then. You had to hurry up!”

Naturally, the friends couldn’t keep up with such a rhythm. Theo was already preparing the second album of the band, Antidote, on his own. Paul Eve left Wall of Sound and founded another creative alliance, Bronx Dogs. “We’d exhausted each other’s company. It’s kind of a cliche now but digging for us was literally our life,” explained Regal. “We didn’t have girlfriends and the ones we did didn’t last we really were that focused. We had no time for anything else.”

In 2001 Paul moved on: “It was kind of still up in the air. To be honest with you, after 9/11 I just thought, Fuck it, that’s going to happen to London, I’m outta here! I phoned up my mates, sold most of my records and just came over.” And found his destiny, noted the interviewer. In a new place, far away, he met his future wife and continued to make music. Theo did too. Up to 2001, he’d been recording remixes under the Wiseguys name, and then he disbanded the project and went solo officially.

“It’s quite funny that the easiest songs to write, Ooh La La, Cowboy 78, Start the Commotion, were the ones that were chosen as singles,” confessed Theo. “So what was the hardest? Ooh, good question. Never really thought about that. Au Pair Girls was difficult. But I think Face the Flames was probably the most difficult. I was going for a mood and I had a tough time trying to achieve it. With Start the Commotion track I wanted something with a ’60s feel.

Ooh la la was simple to write. I just took some samples that I had and threw it all together. It stuck in people’s minds. Its referential point being Sassoon’s 70s shampoo jingle, “Ooh la la, Sassoon,” the track has struck a chord not only on dancefloors, but in TV commercials and movies as well. It’s quite mad, actually. I had no idea nor any clue what “Ooh la la, Sassoon” meant. I only saw it as a cool phrase. Prior to assembling the song, I never even heard of it. That track originally came out in the summer of 98, it was being played a lot in the clubs, and I thought, Great, I’ve made it, because that was my world. Fuck everything else, as long as I’m still being played in the clubs, I feel that I’m successful.”