Liam Lynch (musician)
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Liam Lynch (born September 5, 1970) is a musician, puppeteer, and director. He co-created, co-wrote, played the music for, directed, and produced the MTV's Sifl and Olly Show.
Lynch also made the album Fake Songs, released in 2002, produced by his own company, 111 Productions. This album featured the song "United States of Whatever", which charted in the Top 10 in the United Kingdom and Australia. It is one of the shortest songs to get to the Top 10 in both countries.
Liam Lynch is also known for directing music videos. In 2003 he directed the UK music video for the Foo Fighters single "Times Like These", although it was rarely played in the United States. His video of the song featured the band playing in front of a bluescreen, but MTV didn't like it enough and even criticized it at one time.[citation needed]
He finished shooting the film Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny in July 2005, and he worked with Tenacious D in 2002 on directing the video to the song Tribute, their most popular hit. He directed Sarah Silverman's movie, Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic and he wrote the original music used in the MTV animated series Clone High. He also has an ongoing podcast available through his website that contains skits, videos he has created, and answering viewer mail.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early years
Liam Lynch was born in Akron, Ohio, with the surname Niederst, which he later changed to "Lynch". When he was three years old, he received a toy tape recorder, which he used to make his own shows.
At age nine, his family moved to Hudson, Ohio, a 'small town' where he wound up rebelling against his confining surroundings. Liam was learning to play his first guitar and writing stories. This is also where Liam met his best friend and, later, creative partner Matt Crocco, who had moved to Hudson from New York.
In the fifth grade, he was tested for a new "gifted" student program. He was enrolled in the program, where three days a week he left school to meet scientists, work at a TV studio, take poetry classes and visit art museums. He was also diagnosed with the following disabilities: colorblindness, dyslexia, attention deficit disorder and sequential order deficiency.[1] This led him to describe himself later in life as a "watered-down idiot savant".
In tenth grade, Liam decided to record his own album. Saving money from odd jobs and garage sales, he used a local recording studio. This was a solo effort; he was working in recording studios writing, producing, and playing all the instruments for the solo album made of his own original songs. He produced another album at 17 and used the money acquired from local gigs for starting a scholarship to help creative kids with learning disabilities get past their shortcomings and into art classes.
After graduating from Hudson High School, Lynch went to Kent State University. Matt Crocco soon followed him. "People were freakier than myself" at Kent, Lynch explained. He took classes in writing, African history, glassblowing and sculpture. He had his poetry published in a book, lectured at meetings to psychiatrists and teachers of artistic learning-disabled students and came close to changing the entrance requirements of his college. He collaborated with the Dean of Education to allow artistic students, with low grades in other subjects, to prove themselves academically in the areas where they excelled rather than being held back.
While at Kent, his parents moved to Louisville, Kentucky. Liam met Michael Taylor via a mutual friend, and eventually moved to Nashville, Tennessee after meeting composer Phil Copeland, got into studios, and learned about creativity with deadlines. Liam grew tired of Kent and transferred to Belmont University in Nashville, but left Belmont after only three days of classes.
He continued to play music, this time as the frontman in a band called Owen’s Ashes. The music was theatrical and complicated. He acquired studio time and arranged meetings all over Nashville's Music Row for his new band. While at 12th & Porter, Liam was introduced to Brian Hardin, who would record many demos with Owen’s Ashes at 16th Ave Sound, Quad Studios and Sound Barrier. Despite the recordings, Lynch has claimed that his time in the band "was a failure. Playing in crappy bars, going on tour, working as a dishwasher for three years."
[edit] The 1990s
A close friend found a story in Rolling Stone magazine that Sir Paul McCartney was going to open a unique performing arts school, LIPA (Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts), and gave Lynch information on how to apply. Lynch, then 26, was one of 40 musicians chosen from around the world. He was also one of five students handpicked by McCartney to study guitar on a one-on-one basis (amongst other notable students picked was singer/songwriter Kate Havnevik). Lynch worked in various recording studios with Beatles producer George Martin and befriended ex-Roxy Music synth player/famed producer Brian Eno after several of his lectures.
During this time, he created the concept of what was to become the Sifl and Olly Show. Lynch wanted to make something using the recordings he and Matt Crocco did a few years ago as a Christmas present for Matt. He originally wanted to do stop-action photography, but Liam didn't have the money or the equipment for it. It was 3 A.M. and the only materials he could find were socks. He once said, "It could have easily been buckets." Making puppets out of his own socks and borrowing a video camera from a friend, Sifl & Olly was born.
Lynch sent a few tapes to MTV Europe in 1996, leaving them to become "idents," or short buffer clips played in between videos. A year later, these "idents" were half-hour shows. In 1997, he returned from Liverpool to Nashville, Tennessee to work with his old friends Crocco and Taylor on the Sifl and Olly Show pilot, briefly returning to Liverpool to finish his studies. MTV in America began airing Sifl & Olly in July 1998, but the show only lasted two seasons, despite a cultlike following of the show's fans (known as "sockheads"). A third season was slated to air online on the MTV website but never did, eventually seeing release as a DVD available through the Sifl & Olly website.
The song "United States of Whatever" was featured during Season 2 in an episode of MTV's Sifl & Olly. When the Sifl & Olly Show was canceled, Lynch put the song on a sampler CD. To Lynch's surprise, "United States of Whatever” topped the British charts. Lynch promptly licensed the song November 18, 2002 as a single in the UK on the Global Warming label. It was released on a 3-track CD single. Its popularity spread to America, and Lynch earned a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for the shortest song to be in the top charts in both the UK and US. The song was used in a commercial for Tony Hawk's Underground. Tony Hawk had made a guest appearance on the third season of Sifl & Olly.
[edit] The 2000s
Between the first and second seasons of the Sifl & Olly Show Liam recorded a solo album called Fake Songs. Lynch released the Fake Songs CD on EMI in the U.S. April 9, 2003 (released in the UK in June 2003). The "Fake Movies" DVD that comes with the "Fake Songs” CD contains puppetry, computer animated shorts, skits, music videos, home movies and behind-the-scenes footage.
While working on the album Liam also directed a music video for the Foo Fighters (UK version of "Times Like These"), worked on DVDs for No Doubt, Tenacious D, and Eagles of Death Metal, and finished composing music for the MTV animated series, Clone High. He released his album How to Be a Satellite in 2006. The movie he directed - and album of the same name he helped write and played guitar for, Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, debuted in late 2006.
[edit] Podcast
Liam Lynch now does a very popular podcast called LynchLand, featuring video animations, songs from his albums, and special guests. He frequently features his cats and other animals around his home. His video podcast has over 90,000 viewers, making it a featured subscription on iTunes. Instead of charging individuals for the podcast, he sells t-shirts, albums and other items on his website to offset the cost. Recently the overall price of hosting the podcast was more expensive than the mortgage on his house, and at one point he considered ending the project. He now has advertisements at the end of the show.
[edit] Discography
- Eel
- Fake Songs (2002)
- History of America? (with Matt Crocco)
- Camp Sunny Side Up (with Matt Crocco)
- We're All Nighters (2008)
- How to Be a Satellite (2006)
- Songs from Lynchland
- More Songs from Lynchland
- Get Up on the Raft (2008)
[edit] Trivia
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- Alex Albrecht, formerly of TechTV's The Screen Savers and current co-host of Revision3's Diggnation podcast, made a cameo appearance in a musical number on an early podcast, #6. Albrecht is a personal friend of Liam's.
- Friend Dhani Harrison, son of former Beatle George Harrison, made an appearance in episode number 3 of LynchLand.
- "United States of Whatever" holds the record for the Shortest UK Top 10 single at 1 minute and 28 seconds.[citation needed]
- Lynch is a major proponent of cloning technology and one of very few owners of a commercially-cloned pet. His favorite cat Frankie Forcefield was killed in March 2006 and he purchased a successfully replicated clone in September 2006 through Genetic Savings & Clone named Finnigan Forcefield. Lynch has talked at great length about the cloning process on a few of his podcasts, particularly in Lynchland Episode 5.
