DJ Serious D - Full Send Zine

WARNING: This interview contains some graphic material that some readers may find disturbing!

David Lyddon (aka DJ Serious D) has been through the mill. He’s had more jobs than Job McJobersons’ older brother and life has thrown up more challenges to him than most. In 2005, whilst pursuing an acting career, he experienced a near fatal car crash that would change his world forever. Many would simply give up on life, but not the indestructible Serious D. He wants to look back on his life with ‘no regrets’. He ain’t no quitter, he’s a heavy hitter, playlist spitter, junglist transmitter, all thriller, no filler, full of life and never bitter…

Time to meet, the one and only DJ Serious D…

How you doing?

Yeah I’m doing all right. Thanks.

So, you’ve had a varied early career including butcher, software teacher and bouncer, what lead you to acting?

Well, just from reading your question, it certainly seems like I’ve been a jack of all trades. But acting has been something I’ve always wanted to do ever since I was six years old, which was back in 1977. But as you know, life doesn’t always take you on the path that you want to go on, hence the few different career choices over the years and being married for 7 years. I got divorced in 2007 and decided, what the hell. Let’s just go for it! You see you. Sometimes you’ve got to take a risk whether you succeed or not. Just have fun doing what you love.

Did you formerly study acting or make your way through extra work?

I was actually working in IT. Doing support and training on computers and, to be honest with you, I wasn’t enjoying it. It was very stressful and it was kind of like Groundhog Day. But I used that negativity and turned it into a positive which is what gave me the ammunition to go for it. I did start just to test the water as an extra and found it was such a great fun to do but I wanted to do more than just be in the background, so I put myself through night school in London, studying acting and acting techniques using Stanislavski.

This also meant I had to leave work early which was okay to start with as I did discuss this with them. It also meant that I didn’t have a lunch break and had to drive down to Camden near central London. My boss started to dislike what I was doing and gave me an ultimatum in the end: either keep at my job with his company doing IT support or resign.

So, I promptly resigned and did my notice and decided that I was fed up with following other people’s dreams. I wanted to follow my own and be my own boss. It’s wasn’t easy, but at the same time I have not looked back and found a new kind of freedom following my passions.

What’s the best role you’ve had and why?

That’s a good question as there have been a few, although one of the more fun roles I had was in a film titled ‘In Me’. I played a small-time crook named Terry who was mad on weed with my partner in crime, Zoe. We ended up robbing a millionaire’s home. And yes, I had to do a few unsaved reacts which ended up with him getting killed. This turned out to be quite bad for me in the end as the son goes looking for revenge and ends up shooting me with my own shotgun. It was filmed up in Chester in various locations including a residential street which ended up with the whole neighbourhood coming out to watch.

What was it like on the set of Cockneys Vs Zombies? Must have been a hoot?

Yeah, that was fun. Long days though because the prosthetic makeup I had to wear took nearly four hours to put on and you can’t take it off because it’s put on with a special glue. So, I had to wear it for 10 hours straight. This made it very difficult to eat and drink. But still, it was fun. We shot some scenes in an old brewery in Southeast London. The audition was funny as well as it was with the director and he wanted me to move about like a zombie and act like I was feasting on human flesh.

But everything I’ve been on, every film, TV, whether it’s in the studio or on location. It’s all being great fun. I’ve loved every minute of it. Sometimes when you walk onto a set for the first time it’s just mind-blowing. My jaw just drops because of the detail and the set design. For example, on the set of the Tim Burton film Dark Shadows at Pinewood Studios. They had built the entire town of Maine and the interior of Johnny Depp’s mansion was in one of the studios. But being in the house with the painting going around the walls of the dining area in this Gothic style mansion was incredible and then being in the town with external water tanks with fishing boats floating in it and green screens behind and the tower itself had to be built up on stilts as the fishing boats were full size fishing boats in water tanks that were over 12 ft deep.

And of course, you’ve got the can factory next to the docks so it all had to be higher than water tank itself. The exterior shots of the mansion house were filmed down in Surrey in a pine forest, which is used quite a lot for movies such as Gladiator, War Horse and Robin Hood to name a few.

Would we recognise your voice from any voice over work?

Funny you asking me that because the answer is ‘no’. I’ve had a few auditions for doing some voice over work but not actually got any. But it’s no big deal. You got to remember when it comes to acting that there is a lot of rejection in this industry. You can audition hundreds of times and not get a single gig.

Can you tell us about your car crash? What was it like coming out of an induced coma? Any memories?

Well, the car crash happened in 2005 and I’d just had 2 weeks off work coming back from holiday. It happened on the 11th of July. It was the hottest day of the year and I was on my way to Watford which is where I used to work then. I used to have type one diabetes hands. It looked like I had a hypo which means my blood sugar had dropped too low and I passed out behind the wheel. The police investigators calculated that the crash and impact was at 90 miles per hour and I had to be airlifted to hospital.

I was going to be sent to the Royal Free Hospital in London but had to be diverted because an air ambulance had already landed on the helipad. So I end up being diverted to Oxford where I spent 6 hours in surgery being put back together. My right forearm had shattered and even to this day I still have two titanium plates with 16 screws screwed into the bones and a massive scar on my right forearm. But the most serious injury from the crash as a brain injury as I must have banged my head so many times because the car had actually gone through a telegraph pole. It had chopped that in half, rolled on the ground a couple of times and came to rest in some trees and bushes. Luckily it was the correct way up. I have no memory of this. I can only tell you this from eyewitness accounts of what they saw. They thought I was going to die. That’s how serious it was. And the extent of my injuries was apart from the swelling on the brain. The shattered glass was embedded in my left forearm. It looked like my fist or arm had gone through the windscreen, but also dislocated my left shoulder which popped out and popped in again and I’d fractured my left leg.

Luckily, I have made a full recovery and in order for me to continue driving they had to change my insulin to these new injections which were a lot better because before it was having to inject insulin twice a day in the morning and in the evening. This isn’t a very stable way of controlling your blood sugar because it can go up and it can go down. But with the pen injections you carry them in your pocket and you inject the slow acting insulin in the morning in the evening.

Years later in 2013, I was diagnosed with kidney disease which meant I need a transplant of a kidney and pancreas. They decided to do the pancreas as well which cures the diabetes issue. So no more taking insulin. No more hypos and my blood sugar is perfectly normal.

How did you feel when you realised the extent of your injuries? What exactly is a T4 spinal injury?

Now the spinal cord injury was caused following my transplant at Ed Brooks Hospital in Cambridge. The actual operation was a twelve hour surgery where they grafted in a kidney and a pancreas into my stomach, both of which are working well.

But after the surgery I remember coming round in the recovery room. The Doctor came and did observations and they asked me if I could move my arms and legs? I could at that particular point. I must have fallen asleep again and when they came around again to do some more observations, I could still move my arms about. For some strange reason I could not move my legs or feet. I reached down to touch my leg and I couldn’t feel my leg. My stomach and anything from below my chest was completely dead with absolutely no feeling.

What had transpired was that the spinal cord injury was caused by a spinal infraction. Bottom line is a stroke on your spinal cord at the T4 thoracic which affects mobility to a degree and stability.

So now after spending 6 months in hospital having the transplant and physio and rehabilitation and then transferred to Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury to the spinal unit where they have a specialised spinal equipment and specialists and even a gym. I underwent lots of rehabilitation, swimming and various spinal gym exercises. Although you still have the muscle, you’ve got to learn to walk again. It’s like being a baby. So learning to crawl and then learning to walk using the parallel bars once my legs were strong enough to support my weight. But even that’s not as straightforward as you think. You have to think about what you are doing because when we all walk your pelvic bones gyrate very slightly in order for you get enough lift in your foot.

So that’s when you swing your leg forward to walk in a step. It’s not stuck to the floor which I found out by almost falling flat on my back ha ha! I must admit that this injury, as it is life-changing, has affected my mental health and has left me diagnosed with anxiety and even PTSD. But I am getting counselling for that and I’m on some medication to help deal with that also. This has put a spanner in the works for performing and auditioning for new acting roles but I do want to get back to that but it won’t be the same because of versatility.

Lack of mobility is going to cut my skill set quite considerably, especially as my typical character roles were the hard man. The bad guy, the occasional cop or military.

Will you ever be able to walk again? (aided?)

I am walking again now but the only problem with my walking is I can only walk short distances and I cannot stand for long periods of time as my legs are still not strong enough and I might end up with this weakness for the rest of my life. I have good days and bad days so you can’t predict this. It’s only when you get up in the morning that you find out if it’s going to be good or bad or somewhere in between. If it’s a really good day, I can use a walking stick for short periods. If it’s a mediocre day then I’ve got crutches and on bad days I use my wheelchair. So, if I ever did a live DJ set say at a club or festival or a rave somewhere, I would need a stool or something to sit on while I did it. This is how I do it at home now.

Following the accident when did you have your zen moment to push on and not waste any more time?

My car accident in 2005 and was a turning point in my life. I think 2 years later I ended up getting divorced and I was working doing support for a company when I got into acting over in Berkhampsted near Hemel Hempstead.

But it did make me realise that life is just too short – they thought I was going to die and even when I was in an induced coma, they still thought the same way. My condition got worse and they called my wife at the time who worked for the police. They got a traffic cop car outside the front door in five minutes and drove her up to Oxford doing 140 miles an hour all the way on blue lights.

Being in an induced coma was kind of like a surreal experience because sometimes you could hear voices. You can make out whether it was a man or a woman talking, but you could not make out what they were saying. It just sounded like mumbling but almost like the words for scrambled. I also remember someone running a pen up the sole of my foot. I do remember moving my foot out the way to which they said when I was awake that they did that to test my reflexes to see if I was responding, which was good. I also remember when they would give you a bed bath or changing the sheets to which they had to roll me on my side. And I remember this because they rolled me onto my left shoulder which was the one that popped out of its socket and popped back in again. So, they were unaware of this but I remember the pain but I could not scream out or do anything. It was kind of like RoboCop movie when they switch him on and he can look around and hear stuff and see stuff, but he couldn’t move or react. Then they switched him off again while they were re-building him. It was kind of like that except that I couldn’t see anything because my eyes were closed and when they finally did wake me up the first thought I had was, shit, I am late for work!

I didn’t realise that my right arm was in a sling. My left arm was in a splint. I had tubes down my throat. I couldn’t feel any pain because I must have been so drugged out of my head. So yeah, everyone had to try and stop me trying to get up to which then I was thinking what are you lot doing in my bedroom? It was a huge shock when they told me what ad actually happened.

Where did the handle DJ Serious D come from?

Haha! yes, DJing is serious. D has been my handle for 34 years now. I bought my first mixer and turntables back in 1990. Still back then, it was all vinyl, so that’s what I learned on. It’s is a far more hands-on approach to DJing and there are things you can do with vinyl that are easier to do than using CD, decks or controllers. Equally, there are things that are more difficult to do on turntables.

When did you fall in love with dance music?

Music has always been a part of my life from growing up right away into the mid-1980s when house music first came to the UK from Chicago where its birthplace was. Before that I was into hip hop. I actually went to my first nightclub when I was 15, so got into the dance music quite early on. I used to help a mate do his mobile disco which he specialised more in 1950s 1960s music. Not really my thing and there was no skill. Just putting records on one after the other, no mixing, no scratching, no cutting in, no centre forcing or phasing nothing like that.

My biggest inspiration was when the rave scene started, which came about in the mid to late ’80s up in the north of England. This came about back in the days of Margaret Thatcher and because she sold off, closed down or privatised everything, it left lots and lots of people in the north of England unemployed with no money.

When things like this happen places like nightclubs and shops also close down because people can’t afford to go to the many more or use those shops. You must have heard the song by The Specials titled ‘Ghost Town’? But people still wanted go out, meet up and dance. So sound systems came about and all the old factories and warehouses where they used to work were just standing there empty doing nothing. So, they became the perfect venue for these gatherings.

Of course, the police would do raids on some of these events and even Margaret Thatcher tried to create a criminal justice bill so that it was illegal to play music that had repetitive beats and sounds. So, she waged war on the raves which had by then spread all over the country. Down here it would have been Essex or even some in London. But the locations were kept secret. So, you had to go to a meeting spot which for me was South Mims Service Station on the M25 at Junction 23. Other people would also show up but, someone in the group who would turn up would have a number to phone from a phone box as no one had mobile phones. And if it was on then there’d be a convoy of cars going to some obscure location which could end up in the middle of field in the middle of nowhere or in an old factory.

It didn’t matter because everyone was there for one thing and one thing only, and that was the music, the freedom of expression and to dance. It was kind of like two fingers up at the establishment. It was a very, very rebellious time with raves that were pushed further underground because of police raids. But while the police were doing a raid on one location there could be another two or three going off somewhere else.

The fun part was the pirate radio stations that had been set up in high-rise blocks of flats on the top floor. There was quite an elaborate way of getting in so that the police could not raid them. I did see one where you had to go up onto the roof of this high-rise in London and then you had to kind of abseil and climb down with a harness around you to a window which is where you would come in from and also from where you would leave because the front door was blocked up and made inaccessible.

But yes, the early ’90s were exciting times for music and I mean really exciting times. New original sounds and innovations where some genres such as techno evolved and house music evolved into penny styles such as Acid House, Progressive House, and UK Hardcore came about which was lots of break beats, drum loops, samples and synths with a high energy vibe. Then the birth of jungle that came out of London from about 1992. And it’s still good to see that some of the original junglists are still at it today. Some of the original innovators, LTJ Bukem, Dilinger, Doc Scott, Goldie, Nookie, 4Hero, DJ SS, DJ Hype, Shy FX, Nasty Habits Andy C and the list goes on and on.

You create mixes from house, techno and DNB, any favourites genre?

I love them all from the early days of dance music and raves but my all-time fave has got to be Drum and Bass and Jungle. There’s lots of new stuff but it still has that energy and vibe to it that gets your pulse racing.

Who are your go to artists when mixing old school?

I listed some of those above. But others including artists such as Johnny Jungle, The Brothers Grimm, Phuture Assassins, Ellis D, Metalheadz, Rufige Cru, Kaotik Kemistry to name a few more

Any plans to DJ live again?

I’ve been there and done that back in the ’90s but in saying that if an opportunity ever came up then yeah I would go for it. Great fun providing I can just do a set and not have people coming up asking for requests like they do in some nightclubs. I much prefer to do a set and just do a mix of some serious tunage to get people up.

If you could play at one big festival, where would it be and why?

I think I would love to do a few gigs such as Glastonbury in one of the tents or out in Japan would be another place at some of their venues such as Cyber Japan and Age-ha. But yes, I think jet setting around would be fun.

Are you inspired by any of the ‘modern’ DJ’s? Who and why? What’s your DJ set up look like?

My current DJ setup is quite basic compared to the consoles you can get today. Nothing I have is branded with Pioneer or Technics apart from my amplifier. But I am looking into upgrading soon. Well, when I saved up enough pennies. But what I do use predominantly is by KAM And Behringer. Both I have found very reliable and does the job nicely. As for the turntables which are also KAM DDR3000, they were the closest I could find to Technics 1200’s. They’re direct drive and a nice strong torque with the motor because if you’re using turntables you don’t want an overly sensitive deck where you slightly touch it and it comes to a complete stop.

Is there anyone more prolific at mixing on the planet than you?

Now that’s a tough question, Is there anyone more prolific at mixing than me? Well not as far as I am aware. Bear in mind, I have been doing it for 34 years so I am a bit of a veteran and there’s not really anything that I can’t mix providing it’s not music from analogue recording that’s not being quantized. But if you find out that there is then do let me know haha!

Have Guinness ever been in touch?

Haha very funny! And no, I’ve not heard from Guinness in relation to this. I very much doubt people have heard of me.

You moved house last year, all settled in?

Yes, I did move house last year. I had to because I was stuck in a flat that was difficult to get in and out of now that I have a spinal cord injury. But yes, I have a nice bungalow with a garden and the second bedroom I have converted into my studio which I’ve had soundproofed as well so as not to upset the neighbours. I am very happy where I am. Still need to get a barbecue.

What’s on your toast?

What’s on my toast as in toasted bread? Then it would have to be butter and spread it with some Bovril, marmite, or cheese and not all at the same time. Although butter would be added to all above.

If you were a book, what would it be?

Haha I think I would have to be one of the Mr Men books Mr. Bump. Especially due to the amount of crap that my life has been through so far It could be titled ‘Mr. Bump likes to DJ’.

Any hot mixing tips for aspiring DJ’s?

I would say keep practising and also don’t be afraid to push the boundaries and try new things. Even have a go at mixing two totally different genres of music because sometimes you’d be quite surprised what comes out.

Just ‘feel the music’, ‘feel the vibe’ and just let it flow and relax. It’s also a good barometer on your state of mind. When you’ve done a mix and it sounds absolutely bang on. You know it’s probably come out like that because you’re not tired. You’re not stressed. You’re relaxed and quite happy and I always find when it comes out crap. It’s cuz your mind’s not focused on the job at hand because you’re stressed. So cut everything out when you do it. Even your phone and talking to others, distractions are a pain in the backside. I like to just get into the zone and focus and just feel the music flow. Occasionally it’s hit and miss. Haha!

Follow DJ Serious D on Mixcloud here

He ain’t no quitter, he’s a heavy hitter, playlist spitter, junglist transmitter, all thriller, no filler, full of life and never bitter…and he's got a 'serious' story to tell ya!