Episode: 883
Title: HPR0883: Dan Lynch interview
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0883/hpr0883.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 04:05:00

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Hello everybody my name is Ken Fallon and this is Hacker Public Radio High Jacking
Og Camp 11 Og Camp is over what about Og Camp 12 I'm here talking to a man you might
know and Dan from the Linux Outlaws how you doing there I'm doing great yeah a little tired after
the this we're on this is Sunday night so we're just coming down from packing up and yeah it's
it's great it's tiring at the minute but it's always worth it must be a massive buzz to start off
something and then have thousands of people turn up for no reason yeah it's not quite thousands
yet but it is it is great yeah I mean I always I always love it that anyone turns up really
and the really mind blowing thing for me is that people travel from different parts of
the world we've got someone came from America just for this because when he said he'd come from
America I thought he meant he was here for holiday or something yeah and he you know he came along
but no he came just for this from Charlotte somewhere in America and that's quite impressive yeah
so it's really good fun to see people doing doing that and meeting each other as well because that's
the main thing I was just saying to someone else it's really good when I see two people that I know
but they don't know each other if that makes sense if I have two friends of mine mutual friends who
don't know each other and then I they meet each other at an event like this that I've arranged
or we've arranged together and you see them getting on really well and they get ideas for projects
and that's happened quite a lot this weekend that's always good yeah it's been absolutely fantastic
and I'd like to thank you and the Ubuntu UK ballcast box for allowing me to come down and
basically grab anybody that moved and recorded into it yeah um I was at the show last night just
changing tack for a second then yeah and you played live um one of the other shows that people
might not be aware of that you do although I don't know how that's possible is raffle radio yeah
can you tell us a bit about that podcast yeah raffle radio was my kind of attempt at being
John Peelous for some ways um I just I don't know I have a very strange kind of thing when it comes
to music I like all different styles of music and I like different artists from different genres
and things but I it I don't always like two artists in the same genre I think there's good music
and bad music in all different kind of genres so I'll listen to all of them it's a bit like food
and every years ago someone said to me music is like food and you wouldn't eat the same meal three
times a day every day you want different things at different times and you know you know for me
music is the same um I don't know anyone I'm trying to think uh maybe one person who doesn't listen
to anything but like one kind of music so I think it's important and the idea of the show is I get
to play records and things that I liked I still call them records it's all fashion day I'm not
that they're records these days but yeah um and yeah I play uh creative commons tracks I focus on
independent musicians because um I mean I could it's now point me playing what's what's coming out on
the major labels apart from the fact that it's probably legal for me to do that and they could shut me
down um I don't want to promote what they're doing because they've that's their job um I want to
promote people who are independent musicians trying hard to do something and if I listen to them
and I like them then I just so I want to do is like let other people hear that that they're good
and hopefully it gets passed on and the most satisfying thing is when an artist has an upturn in
say download to something of their music one it's been on the show because that's what I want
is for people to say I think this I mean just because I think it's good doesn't mean it necessarily
is to them but I say I like this and and quite often they'll listen to it and say oh I like that as
well and then go and buy even concert tickets and um you know albums and things from these artists
when they've heard the track free as well so it helps to spread it around that's hopefully the goal
yep and you're involved in a band 20 pound stand yes yeah I play guitar and sing in a band called
20 pound sounds um we only started about a little over a year ago so yeah we're relatively young
in the band sense although not in we're all quite old but that's very confusing but um it's
some philosophy in there somewhere um yeah and um we've been going yeah about a year we've got about
11 original tracks now which I coined the phrase we go all the way up to 11 um once we had 11
original songs I thought that was quite good I didn't coined the phrase I adopted it from someone else
but yeah I thought that was quite nice and yeah the plan right now is to get them recorded
better we were kind of people always ask me what kind of music we play and I say we're a rock band
and they go well what does that mean I go it just it means we play rock music we don't play heavy
metal we don't play you know I don't want to try to put it into genres we play rock music you've
heard you know ACDC and Led Zeppelin and Motorhead and things like that we play things that at
sometimes a bit like that you know but it's like classic hard rock if you like um but yeah I think
it's good because they don't hear a lot of that at the moment um in mainstream music anyway there's
some great bands up there but I haven't I watched Glaston really this year I'm on the telly and
um I watched ages and I waited to see one band who actually rocked you know it sounds mad and
I took me ages and so the ones that surprised me were the Kaiser Chiefs they really really rocked
and not a band I've ever really liked before but when I saw them live getting people into
um getting people moving stuff I thought yeah they've got something and they've got an energy
that they're transmitting to people and I can I appreciate that so that's what we try and do I
don't know if we always succeed but we play um a mixture of things bits of blues and stuff as well
and um but now it's getting more into a fixed style that we've got more songs so they're probably
more like kind of pale jammy kind of hard rock type stuff so yeah it's fun one of the highlights
for the weekend other than having to remind you the first line of the of Gloria was shouting
from the audience the words of Jimmy Carter was he not far yeah that's one of our songs we um
that was a first original song actually yeah first one we did and um it only came about because
of a chance conversation it's like these are one of these things that sound like they've made it up
when you read it in a you know legend history about this record came about but um yeah what happened
was we were just playing one day and we got together we only formed as a band to do one gig and
learn five cover songs and that was the goal if we could do that we just thought we would we'd made
it you know oh you know that's what we wanted to do and then very quickly we realized that we
within the first session of like an hour or two hours or whatever it was we'd learnt like two or
three songs cover songs and things but still we'd learnt them and we thought hang on we all seem
to be able to do this and um and then we just had fun and then I've always written songs over the
years I've been in many bands and things um playing different instruments and so on and then
somebody mentioned Jimmy Carter and I love stupid trivia facts so um many people don't know
that he actually was a peanut farmer and uh read before he became president and um
I somebody said something about Jimmy Carter and I said oh did you know Jimmy Carter was a peanut
farmer and they said that's quite funny and I said oh yeah it is isn't it so we kind of went oh
Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer that's quite a good line for a song and then I went often wrote
the first verse I think um and some other bits and I gave it back to the other guys when we played
it back and then the drummer ross wrote the second verse and he wrote a third verse as well we
but I'm not very good at remembering lyrics as you know so I yeah I do I tend to just get lazy and
do the first verse and then another verse and then the first verse again at the end yeah basically
yeah the classic um I can understand why those artists did that no but um yeah so that
sensor worked really well and yeah it's come out really well it's a kind of like a old rock
and rolly type song and one of the things I really liked not to sound too pretentious about it but
when we went to do some concerts and things we did festivals we did a festival around Matthew
Street in Liverpool where the cabin is we played in the cabin and um one of the guys said to us oh
the engineer in fact at the end the crowd went really that bothered I think it went quite well
but they weren't that into us um but the engineer said to us oh that was really good because you
weren't doing any arty bollocks it was just old-fashioned rock you know rock and roll and I
thought yeah that's great I'm not here to wear skinny jeans and I haven't got them with hair to
do fancy things with it these days and most of it's gray anyway so I just you know I just want to play
my guitar it's not about what I look like or what I'm doing it's about the music you know so people
seem to like that and it's good I hope it keeps so it keeps going if it's okay I'll add that song here
yes definitely of course yeah it's under creative commons as well and I know um you talk about creative
commons and stuff on like a public radio and the reason I like creative commons um people keep
saying to me oh why don't you make more money out of music and so on and it's not about that for me
I mean the problem is right now you've got people who are saying um the copyright is the only way
for art and culture to continue to exist but the funny thing is the copyright system hasn't been
around that long in the in the you know the scheme of human history it's a very very short period
of time that the the copyright system as we know it has existed where huge companies own content
and they charge people licenses for them before that we had the renaissance we had you know
you know how can you say we didn't have art and we didn't have culture we had the renaissance we
had Da Vinci you know all this stuff so and we have a classical music none of that is copyrighted
the actual music scores and still there's this huge industry around it and people can you know
learn from it and look at how it's put together and stuff like that and I think that's really cool
and it sounds like it links back into the open sourcing um so that's why we released under
credit comments so people can share the songs with their friends and if they like it all I want
them to know is that it's buyers and you know that they might come and look at our website and
check check out what else we do if they like it and that spreads our name and it works pretty well
and you'd be surprised because I mean a lot of people will buy things as well which is something
the record companies never seem to understand will buy things even when they're available for free
if they like you um if they they try it and they say oh that's quite good um they will often
say well even if they haven't got the money right now I'll save it up and give it to you
I know a friend of mine was just saying this he he downloaded I think on torrents or whatever
some album um and he really liked it and he went on the artist's website and talked to the
artist actually uh through some kind of forum and said I've downloaded the free version through
back I know that's right it was band camp he downloaded the free as in beer version sorry and he
said I you know I can't couldn't volunteer to pay more at the moment because I haven't got
any money uh because he hasn't got a job at the minute and he says as soon as I get a job I'm
going to go back on and buy the thing for you know five pound ten pound whatever and the artist said
oh that's really good thank you for that you know and I just want people to hear it or whatever
and he's since gone and paid the five pound because it's about connecting directly with the
yeah artists so I think it's cool and it's five pound minus tax obviously going directly into
yeah exactly and um and then you can say for uh yeah yeah exactly I mean and there's also
live things as well I mean you can sell tickets and do tours and things I mean Jonathan
Colton's a great example of this yeah he's been really successful and his stuff so on the
co-coms it's um I think it's by NC so it's attribution non-commercial license yeah um which is
really cool and and even like big name artists have done it now I mean I always bring this up but
nine inch nails and Trent Rezner has released lots of their stuff under their albums under creative
commons and um they're under a uh remexable license that they're under CC by yes uh by NCSA
and or this I think last two or three albums he's done it been under that and they still sold
little hundreds of thousands copies through Amazon MP3 even though people could download them free
lots of people bought them they were still the high I think uh ghosts volume four I'm going to say
that's probably wrong um which is one of his recent albums with under creative commons and it
still became the highest selling MP3 on LP3 album on Amazon for that year even though people could
get it for free um which is amazing because all that means is more people are getting it sure
lots of people get it for free but surely as an artist you want more people to hear what you do
or if you're a painter see it ultimately and that's really cool I like it it's fantastic to
on the network we're releasing one of Wayne's uh yes and into Wayne yeah great I'm stealing all
no yeah that's fine that's what I want so um creative commons artists um is there something that
I should really go out and grab a listen to or well creative commons music yeah well it's
something that I get um accused of a lot and um Peter Cannon uh Dick Turpin who was here today uh
he's he's a funny guy he he wants he said he wouldn't listen to co-cons music when I first met him
because it was all rubbish and um he then somehow wants accidentally heard rap whole radio
and liked some of the tracks and then found out that they were creative commons and he said oh
this actually sounds like a real band that I might listen to or by a record or something and I
said to him but that's the point you know you and he got really into it and he did a thing for a while
where he did a thumbs up thumbs down review which I thought was fantastic he used to write on his
blog every time he listened to the show because he he's very strange he's very directly either I hate
this or I like it and he would put each song on the playlist he would put thumbs up thumbs down
and a little review of why and I always found that fascinating because obviously I didn't agree
because I like everything I play that's why I play it but you know I can respect that he didn't
and I always wanted it was interesting that he is reasons why and he said that a lot and I think
tying it back into your original question before I get too far off the point um yeah creative commons
I think um there is loads of great artists out there um using creative commons I mean I don't
want to keep using Jonathan Colton but he's a great example and there's other ones out there as
well um there's a guy called Brad Sucks and I've heard him and he's done very very well
it's on the sympathy tree players well there you go exactly um and yeah I love that I mean I told
the story before but I mean Wayne Maya specifically uh fit in the connections uh I heard him randomly
on bandcamp as I was flicking through one day and um I heard a song of it's called drinking on my own
again and for me it sounds weird but I look at so many submissions and things and songs and that
that come in I really funny or interesting title will make me listen to that song and if it's
then quite good then it's it's got a good chance um and that's what happened with him I thought
drinking on my own again sounds like an intriguing title I'd like to hear what he's got to say about
that and I listened to it and it was fantastic and from there I got his album and I got talking to him
and I mean that's the first time we met this weekend physically I mean we've talked online um we had
he was on rattle radio as a guest a fabulous guy and he he is releasing stuff in a creative
commons and he's an independent musician still and he's selling CDs and doing paid gigs and things
like that and I mean he's still kind of and it's saddened me he's not more well known
because he still kind of needs to look but more encourage not encouragement a bit more promotion
sorry and um yeah I've been trying to try and help with that but I don't know whether I'm
you know my kind of reach as far and if he if he was on the radio or something like commercial
radio or BBC or whatever it probably helped him a bit more but if I can push him a bit that's
cool and he's doing really great stuff and there are lots of other people as well I mean this I'm
not left handed who played the rattle radio gig um they raised £13,000 or something like that
on Kickstarter I think it was Kickstarter or one of those pledge sites to record their album
and um it worked brilliantly for them uh sliced the pie it was I remember now it's called sliced
the pie and people bought advanced copies of the album before it was made effectively and you could
buy you know uh pay $25 instead of 10 to get like a t-shirt with it and uh added bonuses it went
up to I think $250 or something you could pay if you wanted the ultimate deluxe sign by the band
with a t-shirt and a mug and a yeah exactly yeah um and that's really good and I think that's
the way the music industry's got to change now and going back to the 90s now is just to reuse
yet another example um they've they're doing stuff like um releasing deluxe editions of their stuff
on them I'm very heavily pressed final um in uh signed custom artwork made by the band and each one
is limited editions so they're only so many and they sell for I mean they're a famous band this
isn't a great example but they sell on uh they sold I think three or four of these they only
made like four of these uh very very top limited ones and they sold the all them for like
oh I don't know five hundred thousand pounds and things like that because they were crazy rich
fans out there would pay it but it sounds great it sounds weird but um that's great I mean it's
a different way you've got to add value into the product and I think creative commons is you know
I think it's great for artists it gets it spread around and I use it because I think there are other
ways to make music if you want to as a as a business have you um I know that uh Canadian broadcast
company had a they have a blanket ban on creative commons really yeah I didn't even know that
due to the uh oh this may have changed since and I have I have no interest in the
why is that yeah because of the use of the non-commercial and whether it is commercial or not
it's just too confusing for the legal department so they uh stop at the same situation with
hacker public radio I wanted to you know to put on one of our cable test cable networks so
you know you could play creative commons podcasts but um because of the non-commercial you had to
go to every podcast and get the uh the agreement and it was just too much of a legal headache
yeah I can really go to an organization that says okay here's the cash and uh we're covered for
you well a great example of something like that was last year for our camp 10 I wanted to show
a film screen a film as part of the um events I always have these straight ideas it didn't come
off in the end but there was a film and a friend of mine told me about um about uh creative commons
and remix culture and it's called remix manifesto I don't know how many people know it but go and
look it up um things will be in the show lot there you go uh it's called remix manifesto
I came out about two three years ago and um it covers the whole remix culture basically and in
within the film they talk to um a guy called girl talk who's a remix artist in America who uses
very short samples of famous commercial songs and remixes them into new works basically
and of course that's completely against copyright and all the rest of it um but in America they have
a thing called fair use so they're allowed to do that because it's considered a fair use whereas
the most countries in the world I was shocked when I found this out most I don't I was just gonna say
most I don't know the figures but most countries in the world seem to have a fair use um
provision within copyright and in the UK we don't so I wanted to screen this film and I went on
this website and I tried to talk to him the guy made the film and uh friend of mine talked to him
because she she kind of almost knew him a little bit and she was into film and stuff and she
talked to him and and she said he said his advice was download it off bits or and just play it
anyway but I couldn't get any cinema or um you know respectable place that plays films to agree to
do that because their license would be screwed and they'd be in hot water and the reason the whole
reason is because we don't have fair use in this country and you can you can watch the film in
Poland in the US you can you know all over the world you know Asia whatever but you can't watch
it and there's a list the funny thing was on the website when you click on it there's a list there's
two lists it says like um you can't get this film for some reason because it's detected where your
IP is or something and you click on it says why can't I get this and you click that and it says you
probably in one of these countries and there's a list of about four or five countries where the film
is not legal because of the copyright provision and the lack of a you know fair use provision and
the UK is one of them and the other countries are some I didn't even doubt any of everyone heard of
and that's kind of sad I think but um it links in with what you were saying about the can say
on over non-commercial yeah I think there's a change in the law coming up to allow for
the amount of fair use okay here in the UK what we've been talking to John the nice guy and the
yes there'll be a link in the show notes to that episode where we go into very very great detail
about everything else you need to do to to put on music and live so I guess probably by the time
people hear this we'll know about outcome 12 that's it that's a great question yes I don't know
anything about outcome 12 so if you do know anything feel free to tell me yeah I mean I don't know
it's the same thing I mean when they're the act and John and all those guys do still great
alive I think they felt the same way that you yeah basically I mean you can probably hear
my voice I mean you you um you put all this effort in and while you're doing it it's a lot of
really hard work and I mean I haven't really ever felt bad about it because I like as I say
seeing people getting on I love seeing people having fun and if we can facilitate that in some way
that's great but and then you feel really exhausted and you think why do I do I do this you know
I mean at some point you get to the point where you think oh I could just I just really rather
arrest you know and let someone else do it instead and and then usually over a period of time it
can sometimes be weeks or it can sometimes be a week or could be a year not a year later but you
know a little time later someone within the group of kind of six of us will start to say you know
what I I don't think we should do another one because that that was really good because you know
you tend to forget the bad bits and you only remember the good bits exactly yeah and you yeah
you get to this point and you say you know what that is a really good idea and then you get to
about a month before the event when the planning's like hell and everyone's a war and you think
I've done this again I'm not doing it again and then you just end up doing it so I'm sorry I would
I would um I would say probably that yeah it will probably it will probably happen again um I
can't say 100% for sure but I yeah I definitely hope so because it's a lot of fun and we were to
actually talking um this is kind of hot off the press but I don't know if this is and if I'm
should be saying this or not but I don't really care um we were talking in there in the bar um
and people were saying they really liked the venue we had this year yeah and they liked the location
being a proud northerner I we tried to get it up I did it in Liverpool last year and people really
enjoyed coming to Liverpool and I think changed some perceptions that people had about the place
which is what I wanted to do and so that it's not like all grim and gray and your stuff getting robbed
and whatever that it's a really modern culture city as I believe and I'm I'm completely biased
and I admit that absolutely but yeah but I'm proud of my city and I want stuff to happen
to us doesn't mean that's not right well exactly and um yeah and but obviously people are saying
why don't you do it in London and I said oh I don't want to do it in London it's too far away and
you know I respect that a lot of people work and live in London and I've got lots of friends
to do it but I'm happier where I live in Liverpool because I can always get to London into I was
on a train or two and a half hours if I need to and so it's not out of reach but at the same time
I don't have to live in it so it's quite cool um but yeah they um so we did it in Liverpool and then
I just didn't want to do it again this year good but I did want to do the event I didn't want to do
all the arrangements yeah because it was in Liverpool last year it was kind of like ended up with me
having to do a lot of the work for it um because I was right by the venue so Popeye found a venue
near his house and there so there's a venue near my house and I thought that's brilliant that means
he left to do everything and yeah so I said yeah I'm really up for that yeah but um someone else
can do all the you know the legwork and stuff and it's kind of weird I like that but Tony's done
loads and I mean we've all done a lot I don't want to don't want to sound like I'm playing favourites
but yeah it's really good and um the people liked the venue apparently and more people have
much I've grudged Shane's I do think more people have come this year because we were in a sudden
location near it to London because lots of people are in London apparently can't travel too far away
from it or they get sick or something they can't they can't deal with it so like the text when you
call yeah I think I don't know what it is yeah they get they get a graphobia or something and I have
to go back um and they yeah they just wouldn't leave so we moved a little bit closer to them although
we're not actually in London but we're near enough for people to get to really easy and it wasn't
hard that hard for me to get to so it was a bit more of a drive for me this year but well especially
this last year it was like right in Liverpool but yeah it was great and hopefully we would hope it
would be at the same place but I can't confirm anything at this day so everything I've just said
might be complete rubbish and you might not hear anything about it but I would say there's
it's probably going to happen it's probably going to happen again it was a really nice venue I thought
and the rooms and everything was together and the crew the crew had been incredible absolutely fantastic
Laz is I've said this so many times he's going to think I'm stalking him or something but
Laz has just done everything and like a good example is so we're in the pub here back by the
premier in and when I arrived this morning yes so when I arrived this morning Laz had already
talked to the manager of the bar and found out that it closes normally at 10.30 and asked them if
we had like 100 people would they stay open and agreed it with them without me even knowing and
I just went oh wow that's an incredible yeah and he just told me he's basically fixed everything
and he keeps doing that all the time and the more he does it the more I think yeah this is great
I could get used to this um so it's great and he's done lots of great work with the crew obviously
all the people who helped on the crew have been fantastic we had a lot of great sponsors as well
and we had PDPC gave us money for the bar for the bar last night so it's great that people chip in
I think I'm going to sound really you know over the top here but I think like philosophically like
what it is for me is if you treat people the way you want to be treated and you treat people well
other people will respond to that and it seems to happen I mean it doesn't happen everywhere not
everyone's nice but I believe there's more nice people than nasty people in a very simplistic term
you know but I think that's what happens and it's great to see nice people come together because
we need to do it more because then we can show that we're the the majority I think it's important
to point out when we're recording this you know this is the weekend of the riots where
yeah England is very much in the news about you know the selfish culture I guess and then
here we are at a free culture yeah event um sort of balancing the whole camera skills I think
possibly yeah yeah so that's all we try and do is bring people together and let them have fun
and facilitate and thank yeah touch wood it seems to work yeah listen down I'm going to let you
go back because you need to go back thank you very much for taking the time to do the interview
I'm doing all the rest of the stuff and again tune in to Hacker Public Radio tomorrow for another
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