DJ EDDIE FM

Edward Lyman is a house music DJ and producer originally from Chicago, Illinois. I had the chance to sit down with him at his place in Los Angeles. We chatted about his experience as a DJ that was lucky enough to grow up into the house music scene.

House music took off in Chicago in the early 80s and Lyman was right there as a kid, listening to WBMX-FM. “I’d tune in to the Hotmix 5 show. You’d get to hear legends like Farley “Jackmaster” Funk and Julian Jumpin’ Perez. I still listen to and love those mixes.”

He jokes that his mother must have conceived him during an insane night at Frankie Knuckle’s “Warehouse” –the club where house music began. (His dad didn’t think that was funny).

“Growing up I’d make tapes, pretending to be on the radio.” In the summer of 1988, Lyman actually got on the air when a teacher taught him a “theory” about building a pirate FM radio transmitter.

“He said you could patch a signal into the telephone box and amp up your transmitting power. I never told him, but his ‘theory’ actually worked.”

Listeners would most frequently hear tracks like Walter Gibbon’s “Set it Off”, which got the most spins.

In 1992, Lyman dropped out of Lake Park High School and began working as a producer at WLUP (The Loop) for the Steve Dahl Show. Dahl is the shock jock that organized the “Disco Sucks” campaign and blew up thousands of vinyls at the old Comiskey Park. “I started right when Steve & Gary split up and formed their own shows.”

Around the same time, Lyman’s interest in house music grew stronger. He was also inspired by the mixmasters on WBBM-FM (B96), including legendary Bad Boy Bill.

Lyman was 16 years old when he went to the Park West, a nightclub in Chicago, and for the first time experienced the mania of house music. ”I got house music long before I was able to drive, but until you really hear it at a big club with a good system, with lots of good looking people everywhere, dancing and happy, you’re missing the whole elusive thing they call ‘the vibe’. At that point my interest in house music became an obsession.”

Back then, Lyman came into possession of a roster for nearly ever record label executive. ”My girlfriend, at the time, and I would call up promotions execs in L.A. and b.s. our way onto guest lists. She’d always want to see acts like Ce Ce Peniston, Crystal Waters, and Robin S.”

In 1993, Lyman purchased a pair of Technics SL-1200 Mk2 turntables and instantly began making mix tapes. “Back then, most of the mixes on the radio were created on analog
multi-track reel-to-reels.

Some dj’s were starting to use digital audio workstations like Spectral.” Lyman used the Soundscape SSDHR1, a non-linear digital 8 track editor/recorder to create his first underground mixtape “Mixed Emotions”. At that time a friend nicknamed him “Eddie Killer G”. Lyman used it as his DJ name.

His earlier mixes incorporated up to 250 house tracks within a 60 minute mix set. He used an Ensoniq-ASR 88 to apply experimental filters, samples, and deeper basslines to his mixes (which he says was later stolen by a friend. So if you ever find it, e-mail him).

Lyman remembers keeping an eye out for vinyls from Traxs Records, Dance Mania, Cajual, and Chicago Relief Records. “Thre’s too many to name, it seemed like 20 new vinyls came out a week at Gramaphone.”

Since Chicago had such an amazing house scene, Lyman says it took him awhile to realize other cities even made house music. Eventually, he started buying everything he could afford from Strictly Rhythm. “Armand Van Helden, David Morales, Erick Morillo, Todd Terry, Kenny Dope, and of course Josh Wink.”

During our interview, Lyman reminisced more about being a teenager hanging out in Chicago’s house music clubs. “I was working on some tracks with a bouncer who worked at ‘The Hype”, a teen house music club in Des Plains, Illinois. I drove up to meet him and gave him some beats on a cassette tape. It happened that Green Velvet (a.k.a. the iconic Chicago producer Cajmere, known for the hit house track ‘Percolator’) was booked that night. ”I think Green Velvet just released Flash and was supposed to DJ. But a couple of cops shut the club down that night because his dancers were too erotic. Whatever that means.”

In 1996, Lyman moved to Florida. He continued mixing at nightclubs and parties while attending community college on a GED. “I was out of school for a while and felt like I was missing something.”

The electronic scene in Florida was heavily concentrated with drugs. Lyman explained everything was changing quickly, raves were now in the mainstream and the audiences in Florida were littered with ecstasy, acid, and breakbeats. ”I only advocate illicit drug use when you are forced to listen to horrible music. For example, when you’re in your friend’s car for five hours in the hot desert, on your way to Las Vegas, and your friend wants to stream a brand new dubstep podcast.”

Lyman frequ