Songoftheday 11/25/22 - If you're curious, and you got the notion...

 

 

"Start The Commotion" - The Wiseguys

from the album The Antidote (1998)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #31 (three weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 6

 

Today's song comes from the British alternative dance act the Wiseguys. Theo "Touché" Keating and Paul "Regal" Eve got together in London in the mid-1990s originally as a production team, and released the EP Ladies Say Ow! independently in 1994. On the buzz from that the duo were signed by Wall Of Sound Records, a bigger indie, and released their debut single "Nil By Mouth" a year later. That song would appear on their first full-length release, Executive Suite. The third single from that set, the two-for-one of "Casino Sans Pareil" and "A Better World", became their first British chart hit at #88 in 1997. Eve nominally left the act (though would still appear on record pictures) as Touché went on to record the act's second album The Antidote, which came out in 1998. The set continued the Wiseguys' gimmick of combining hip-hop grooves and rap snippets with campy obscure pop and rock samples from the 1960s. This was shown best in the first single from the set, "Ooh La La", which chopped and screwed the Mission Impossible bossa-nova track "Jim On The Move" by composer Lalo Schifrin from 1967. On its initial release, the single peaked at #55 in the summer 1998. That was followed by "Start The Commotion", which initially got to #66 at the close of 1998. But then "Ooh La La" was used in a TV commercial for Budweiser beer, which causes massive interest in the song (this was a time pre-internet where TV ads would be a big source of "viral hits" in the UK). The song shot back on to the British chart, going all the way to #2 (behind Shanks & Bigfoot's club hit "Sweet Like Chocolate") in June of 1999. 

 

With that momentum, "Start The Commotion" was also re-released, and did a little better in the UK at #47 at the end of that year. In the spring of 2000, "Start The Commotion" started to get picked up by club DJs in America, and placed on Billboard magazine's Dance Club Play chart at #36. A year later, that song would also be picked up for a TV ad, this time for the Mitsubishi car manufacturer, who used the record in their American commercials. The song uses another "hip" obscure sample, this time "Wild Child", the title track of the 1966 album from the instrumental surf-rock band The Ventures. Here's the original...

The Wiseguys used the buzzy and noisy and dirty groove to anchor the single, including non-lyrical "Ba-ba-bas" in the style of the baroque pop vocal groups of the time, along with a uncredited rappers (Season and Sense from the Bronx Hip-Hop rock group Shootyz Groove) who riff on the title of the track. Otherwise it's structured like an instrumental, but was ear-catching enough to grab the attention of American audiences, and placing them on the radio and giving the Wiseguys their first (and only) hit...

 

 This time out, "Start The Commotion" became the Wiseguys' first and only hit in America, reaching the top-40 on Billboard's Hot 100 in August of 2001. On the radio, the song just missed the top ten on the Mainstream Top-40 Airplay chart at #11, while making it to #14 on the older-skewing Adult Top-40 format. The Antidote album, released originally in 1998, peaked at #133 on the Billboard 200 sales tally in 2001 from the success of the single.

A third single from the Antidote released in Britain, "Cowboy '78", which drew from a handful of samples including the western movie theme "The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly", failed to garner any attention. Touche' stopped using the Wiseguys moniker shortly thereafter, and both he and Eve have pursued their own music individually. 

(6/10)

(Click below to see the rest of the post)

Here's Touche' with Season and Sense performing the song live on French TV in 1998...

And lastly, the Mitsubishi ad that gave "Start The Commotion" its second wind...

Tomorrow: I'll have my weekly singles reviews, and Sunday the same for the albums making the charts, them on Monday a Miami rapper admits he's a baaad boy.