So, where did it all begin for me? Well, there are two things that I love. One, of course, is music. I grew up in a house where the stereo or radio was constantly on. Both Mum and Dad are great music lovers and I was brought up on the sounds of Radio One, Pink Floyd, The Jam, Tom Robinson, The Specials, Ian Dury, The Police, Peter Gabriel, The Beatles, The Stones, The Beach Boys, Hot Chocolate, The Selector, The Who, The Clash... the list goes on! The house was always full of great music. I’m also just about old enough to remember the 8-track player in Dad’s Cortina 1600E! Dad even taught me how to record from the Top 40 on a Sunday by fading in and out to remove the intros using the recording level on the tape deck!

But unlike other kids, I had another, quite unusual, interest. From an early age, I’ve always been fascinated by all things electrical. I had learnt to wire a 13-amp plug by the time I was seven and was soldering at nine. I was always taking stuff to bits, learning how things worked. But there was something else that fascinated me even more… I have always been into lighting and lamps! The fact that electricity can pass through a thin wire filament inside a glass bulb, or gases in a tube, to produce light I found quite astonishing! As young as four, I would watch the streetlamp outside our house come on at dusk and be mesmerised as it morphed from a dim red to a brilliant monochromatic amber glow! So much so that I thought Randy Crawford was actually singing ‘Streetlight’ with the Crusaders in ‘Streetlife’!

Top of The Pops was essential family viewing at our house and I’d enjoy watching the lighting displays flashing along with the great hits of the time. Back then the lighting was rather primitive by today’s standards, but creative at the same time. Every trip to the fair was always a treat too, as it was my first proper exposure to ‘loud’ music. I would walk by the various big rides blasting out tunes like Dexy’s ‘Geno’ and ‘Rapper’s Delight’ from huge speakers whilst looking in awe at all the coloured lamps and tubes!

My first taste of disco lighting was when one birthday, I think it was my fifth, I unwrapped an actual fuzz light, with a plug already fitted and ready to plug in! It was a big blue light, just like the ones on the fire engines! I was over the moon! That same year, I attended a wedding and experienced a mobile disco for the first time. As you can expect, I was blown away all over again at all the screens, infinity panels and spot banks! The DJ even had the same fuzz lights as me, this guy was cool! I still remember watching the lights pulsating to the Human League’s ‘Love Action’, which has remained one of my all-time 80s favourites, probably for that reason! It was on that night that I knew for certain what I wanted to be when I grew up!

There just so happened to be a disco shop on the Cowley Road in my home town of Oxford, named after its phone number ‘722027’. This was the shop window I always loved gazing into. One day, amidst all the wonderful ropelight, lightboxes and scanners, my eyes rested upon the most unusual object… a fluorescent tube that was black! I remember asking Dad why was that striplight black and he just told me it was a ‘magic bulb’! But, sure enough, that Christmas morning Santa had delivered one of those very units! Again, fully assembled complete with plug! I have never been so eager to plug in and switch on something, before or since. What followed was the familiar ‘plink-plink-hum’ of the starter and ballast, before the tube was illuminated by a strange dim purple glow. At first I was unimpressed, then I saw my pyjamas were glowing in the dark, as was everything else in my room! Never in my life had I seen such an awesome light!

Fast-forward another two years and I was presented with the chance of my very short lifetime. An opportunity to win my very own disco setup, right there on the side of the Ready Brek packet! Dad helped my write the limerick required to enter and the coupon was promptly posted. Two weeks later, whilst I was home from school for half term, a 7.5-ton lorry pulled up outside and the driver wheeled a huge parcel up to OUR front door! It was for me! I had only gone and WON! Inside the box was a brand new red Pulsonic Plus 4-way spot bank and a matching red Sanyo radio/cassette ‘Ghetto Blaster’! I was ready to party, once I had fitted the plugs!

I was so chuffed with this bundle that I couldn’t wait to share the news with my friends back at school. When I told the class, my teacher suggested I did the ultimate ‘show and tell’ by DJing for the school disco at the end of term. My first gig! Now that was some challenge! I had already experienced a couple of ‘proper’ school discos by then and had seen the awesomeness of a Citronic Thames 2. So it was with a little apprehension that I wheeled my stereo, fuzz light, spot bank and 18” UV light in Mum’s old pram down to school with all my Top 40 and NOW cassettes! One table was all I needed to set up on (shame I don’t have a photo!) and I soon discovered that what sounded very loud in my bedroom was completely lost in a school hall! All I could hear was the whole school singing along to Ghostbusters! Despite the inadequacies of my setup, I found out on that day that there really is something very special about playing music to a room full of people.

Although it was fun, I felt discos were best left to the pros, so didn’t take my budding DJ career any further. Then, at the age of 14, I got together with a couple of schoolmates and we cobbled together our own disco. We had a FAL System 50 console and speakers, borrowed from the local social club, together with a little collection of lights that involved homemade concoctions from Maplin kits. My electrical knowledge really came in handy!

Our parents would drive us around and we had good fun, even enjoying a naughty drop of cider at gigs! However, exams and girlfriends came along, and by the time we had left school ‘musical differences’ had caused us to disband. My DJ career was over! I was encouraged to forget the idea and focus on college and a ‘proper’ job instead.

From there I went on a BTEC course, which I hated, and ended up on a dismally paid YTS scheme at which I was sacked from two consecutive placements. I really was losing hope, until I landed a Saturday job at the aforementioned 722027. I was in heaven! Working with the kit I loved and speaking to DJs every week, I was even given the chance to roadie for a couple of them! But getting my own disco off the ground still seamed nigh on impossible at 18 years old. The Yellow Pages was full of established discos in those days and I was told there was just ‘too much competition out there’!

One Friday evening during some barely legal drinking in the local with my best friend Paul, I spilled out my frustrations. Then he put his arm on my shoulder and repeated that famous Bill Murray (as Peter Venkman) line from our favourite film, Ghostbusters, from when the trio had just been kicked off the university campus. “Call it fate, call it luck, call it karma… I believe you and I are destined for better things… to go into business for ourselves!”

By this point I already had a pair of JB Systems belt-drive decks, an OMP 6-channel DJ mixer and a single Technics SLP520 CD player set up in my bedroom. Paul had a similar player and we were soon on a train into London for our first ever PLASA! This was 1994 and we were quite simply blown away! A shopping list was soon put together and Crossfade was born! I came away with a handful of the, then new, Mastermix Classic Cuts CDs which became the foundation of my collection! We’d both passed our driving tests, and Paul even had a nice shiny new Ford Escort company van which just about held our kit!

Sharing common interests in lighting, music and electronics, we discovered two marvellous Essex-based firms called Terralec and BK Electronics. These guys brought affordable kit within our reach and we soon had a rig of our own, based around the heart of a BK Electronics OMP MXF600 amp! I remember chatting with my barber about our new venture and he suggested I approach a pub just up the road. Unbeknown to us, this was rumoured to be the roughest pub in Oxford! However, the landlord booked us on the spot and we did our first gig, a 60s night! Given our limited collection and knowledge of 60s music, the night flopped. However, the landlord must had seen some potential in us and had us back! After a few gigs, the locals began to warm to our show and we soon had packed nights. The place was rocking! Word got around and we picked up a few other gigs along the way.