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LIKE A VIRGIN: BOY GEORGE'S FIRST GIG

Replacing a cassette loop at Pushca

“My first-ever DJ gig was in 1979, but my first house gig was for Pushca — the rave thing in the ‘90s. It was somewhere in west London. I went to one of the raves and they had this chill-out room that was playing a cassette tape that was just going round and round and round.

I said to the promoters, ‘You should really get someone to play music in here, it’s monotonous, and everyone’s in here’, and they said ‘Why don’t you come and do it?’ So I literally put my records into a cardboard box, went down there and played everything from old house to reggae to pop and trash music — that’s how I started really again.

It was one on, one off — the mixing came a bit later, and I did that quite publicly. 
“I was doing it for love, I think Pushca paid my cab fare and I didn’t really need the money. Then I started getting offered gigs, and I started doing it professionally. So I had to knuckle down and get a bit more skilful, and I’ve been doing it 20 years now.”