Andy Interviews...

"The WiseGuys"

Nowadays, musicians aren't just entertainers, they're role models. They are purveyors of an image, a lifestyle you wish you had. Underneath it all, they're rarely as hardcore as their image would seem. However, if it's hardcore you want, The Wiseguys' bald-headed leader TouchE9 is your man. An embodiment of pure hip-hop, the man can scratch your discs 'til you faint, redo your Gran's living room like a New York subway train, and then spin on his head for an encore.

"He's just well rounded in the whole of hip-hop," extols in Sense Live, one of the Wiseguys' round robin rappers. "We were all kind of taken aback by him, 'cos he's a London brother, in London, and we were in New York, and he was more on the ball than we were and we were in the place where it started. We were kind of like 'Holy shit, he's a fuckin' Brit!' He can DJ, he can breakdance, and he's a ridiculous graffiti artist. That's B-Boy skills."

"As KRS said," quotes fellow rapper Season "I am hip-hop!"

"It's just the culture," continues Sense, "he embraced it at an early age." The hype says he got his first decks at the age of twelve. It seems like art lessons were an excuse to just daub things. And all things were hip-hop.

"Yeah," pipes up TouchE9 for himself, "When you're a kid it's just one of those things you can express your talents through. Be yourself. The graphics was something I would have pursued, I've done record covers, and I've done work for TV, and I was doing work for TV when the Wall Of Sound thing came along. Certain people know me for that, I've made a name for that in some ways, but the two things don't cross. I don't use the same name. People know me for that and may say 'I know your music,' or 'I know your pieces,' but the two things don't really cross over."

As a young man, the interests didn't change, and he got to meet the rest of the substance of the Wiseguys, and blow them away with his hardcore self.

"I just remember him being bang into his music," says drummer Tommy, of their times together at college. "He would collect records then, and was this really, really good DJ. Unless there was some cruel twist of fate it was always going to happen that he was going to do something musical. It was slow, but it happened."

"I guess I paid my dues, as they say," agreed TouchE9. "I wasn't confident it was always going to happen like that. Originally, I thought I was going to pursue my artwork, do a degree in art. I only applied to one college, and didn't get in there, and thought 'No, I don't really want to do this,' took a step back, and luckily the music thing worked out. It's only in the past while that it will have the momentum where I'm not going to end up working in a bank, or in Tesco's."

If anyone wants to know how get this kind of job security in music, read TouchE9's life as an instruction manual:

"I've been DJing for ten years, starting at little parties, then little clubs, little residencies here, then trying to pick it up, demos, talking to people, then one day someone goes, 'Actually, you're alright, do you want to make a record?' Then someone else goes, 'Actually, I like your record, do you want to come and do this?' Little bookings, DJing off the back of Wall Of Sound, then other people going, 'Oh, and we'd like to book you as well. No one's given me a bunk up, I haven't kissed anyone's arse or shat on anyone to get where I am. I came up the slow way, but the right way."

No matter what he did in the past, TouchE9 and the boys are now getting more than a little attention for their tunes. The Wiseguys are darlings of the stupid-head school of music-fashion, in particular Radio One. It seems a little peculiar that they are not just no-thought fun music, coming from the same record label as The Propellerheads and Les Rhythmes Digitales, but they still do their best to make records of integrity. So how are they coping with the pressure of fame and making tunes that you can shake yer arse to and nothing else?

"It's cool, I've got no problems with it. It's quite a gradual thing usually, anyhow. Unless you make some ridiculously big record that goes top 10, you just build, you get used to it. It's like how you boil a lobster, innit? You heat the water up slowly, it doesn't just boil straight away. I'm not one of these people who's like 'Only 20 people can ever hear of me!' I make tracks and people get into them, as long as they're not crass records, so what? It's not like I'm the All Saints or anything. I like the All Saints, actually. I'd like to meet them one day. They wear my brother-in-law's clothes, no, no, no, he's not my brother-in-law, 'cos I'm not married. Forget it.....I've got no problem about the publicity angle of it."

The Wiseguys progress in the media stakes has meant some major upheavals. For their first album, "Exectutive Suite", their were two mainstays, TouchE9 and Paul Willis-Eve, aka Regal. Now there is but one, and his general crowd of mates who help out from time to time. Once again it's a tale of the press....ure.

"I think that's why Regal got a bit didgy about it, and wanted to leave. One, he wasn't feeling the music and didn't want to make hip-hop based tracks anymore, two, largely, he didn't like the scrutiny, the way it started coming. Almost like expectation, you have a standard which is expected. Once you do one thing, and people say it's got to be better than that. He didn't like travelling, he didn't like flying places to DJ and stuff, he used to get all moody and stuff, and say 'I've turned into a really horrible person.' So he's decided to stay at home and be more anonymous now."

Although they have maintained their style with strict discipline, and have things to say to the world, The Wiseguys can still rock the place.

The new album "The Antidote" has some of the funkiest hip-hop you've ever heard.....next time you find it at a listening post, tracks 6 ('Search's End'), 9 ('Start The Commotion') and 15 ('The Bounce') will have you jiggling in the aisles. However, at one point over the summer they threatened to go thermonuclear, with a challenger to King Pop Tart himself, Norman Cook, or the Fatboy Slim. That was track no. 2 - 'Ooh La La'.

"Ooh La La" was never designed to be a big old massive record. I made that record specifically so that I could play it in my sets, and there were certain DJ's, tactically, who I knew liked what I did, but wouldn't play my records in their sets, because it wouldn't fit tempo-wise. So I thought 'I'm gonna play these people at their own game. I'm going to play a Wiseguys track that sounds like a Wiseguys track, that still has that style and that integrity, but these people are going to have to play it. It was like a joke, it was my project for the day, then it just happened to blow up, everyone was bang into it, it was all over the shop. I was quite glad, because Radio 1 didn't want to playlist it, and things like that are really important. Apparently there were all these arguments about it, Mary-Anne Hobbs was going, why don't you play this, and all the bods were going 'No!'. It was cool, because it stayed appealing, people weren't like 'I'm sick of this record,' and also if you get a record really high, people go - 'Right, your next one's got to be better,' and you get on this hampster-like wheel."

However, when he wants the limelight, he's there, flashing his knickers with the best of them. Take Ibiza for example. Not exactly a haven for your hooded-topped, influence-important hip-hop types, you'd think. Think again. This guy'd share a set of decks with the devil for a fun evening out.

"Ibiza! How did I cope?" laughs TouchE9. "Absolutely....adequately. I adapted within two hours of landing. Ibiza was," smirks at Tommy, "a laugh." Tommy giggles. "There's fun to be had. It's what you make it. It depends if you get into the spirit of it. As far as DJing goes, no problem mate. The last party of the year at Manumission, last year, when they asked me and Norman to come back and do it. We did like half an hour each, then we went back to back, it was hilarious. We were both totally lashed I got up to the turntables, put on a couple of records, and he was like 'Right then, I'll have you!' we were getting steadily worse, digging away for records and then reeling around, going 'Oh what?' just going for madder and madder records. It was just mental. That was a good night."

Cue Ibiza stories; cue stories which break Student Union censorship laws; cue stories which would get certain well known radio DJ's a very bad name for themselves. Cue Tommy snatching the dictaphone, and wiping the whole thing.

"I always fucking do that man! We were on the tour bus, going off on one, and there was a camera pointed right on me. And it's like," - Tommy snatches imaginary camera - "Rewind!"

So having been well and truly edited, the boys continue their stories - the legal ones, that is. Like, for example, in the search for a perfect evening out, where to go and not go on New Year's."Last year's New Year's Eve was a good night out. I got loads of booking offers from places like Sicily, but I wanted to be amongst my mates. The year before last I did something similar, and took some mates with me, but the place was so dire. It was Belgium. We were just sitting there with all these guys who looked like Geography teachers. So the next year I wanted to stay in London, so I did The End, and did the midnight spot there, which was wicked. Then we went on to this party in these photographic studios, and there was everyone I knew there. It was like 'A Long Time Ago In America', just walking in and everyone was going 'Heeey!', arms outstretched. It was wicked."

"I was at Alexandra Palace," moaned Tommy, "the worst, ahem, second best New Years Eve party ever."

With the sound of this, you would think that a bunch of guys, who've been round the London circuit for years, know how to enjoy themselves.

What to do at night and stuff. Unfortunately, coming out on tour, and having a bunch of interviews as the highlight of your day tends to put of a downer on things. Just a little.

"They call them the Heroin hours," explains Tommy. "You know all those rock bands who end up on smack. When you go on a big tour, you realise why, 'cos there's parts of your day, like six hours, when you're just sitting around, it's so boring. If you're in the middle of the Rieperbahn, for example, the biggest Red Light district in the world, you're gonna go out and buy a few things, y'know. A massage, sex aids...."

So when you need a little something to do between interview and night out clubbing, why not ask TouchE9's tips on how to kill a little time?

"He's always picking up those mags in Hamburg, all those pornos," laughs Tommy. "He's got a stack THIS high."

"No, no, no I don't! Fuck off! I tell you what I say to do though.....Burn all buffalo shoes. Burn them on every street corner. Take them out on the street like the dead and the plague. Burn them. They're just the rankest fashion of the past two years. People will look back and go 'What the fuck was I wearing? Buffalo shoes. Urrrgh!' They're these shoes with the big moulded things on the bottom. Platform trainers. Burn them. Burn them now!"

Click here to get details of "Ooh La La

Expand on the Topic" Wiseguys' first hit or here for details of their latest release "Funk Off! Vol. 1" and other material produced by the group.

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