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Rock My Monkey: Hello, you are listening to the Rock My Monkey netcast on RockMyMonkey.com. Today we are speaking with Shannon Crawford of the band Monster In The Machine. How are you doing today, Shannon?
Shannon Crawford: Good. How are you?
Rock My Monkey: I’m doing pretty good. Now, your new cd, Butterfly Pinned, is way more mellow than one would expect from a band signed to the label of a member of Korn. Do you think that was intentional that he signed a band that was so far removed from his own band?
Shannon Crawford: I guess good music just stands out whether it’s mellow or hard. Korn is one of the bands, even though they are heavier, they write good songs. And a good song is a good song, no matter what style. This album is just sort of what naturally came out of me, and that’s what we got. The songs are there. And that’s why he signed it.
Rock My Monkey: How did you get Josh from A Perfect Circle involved?
Shannon Crawford: Well, the bass player, Doug Ardito, who was my bass player for Cellophane is in Puddle Of Mud, and Josh Freese does all the recording with Puddle Of Mud. So Doug has a relationship, a working relationship with him. So Doug gave Josh some of my demos. Josh loved them, and he said, ‘Yeah, I’ll play on it.’ And so he-I basically did my template at home on my computer, and then we were mixing it at Henson, or what I still like to call A&M, he came in and we overdubbed all the drums. So that’s how we did it, and it just turned out amazing.
Rock My Monkey: What would you say is going right with Monster In The Machine that wrong with Cellophane?
Shannon Crawford: It’s too early to tell. The only thing, as far as what’s going right, is my attitude and my train of thought. I still have people on the business end-you know, there’s a constant conflict with the artist and the business end. The label, the people who are being non-artists. There are two different languages spoken. I don’t speak their language, and they refuse to learn mine. So that is an ongoing problem I think for every artist. But the only thing really going right at this point is my attitude, because we’re at the very early stages of touring. We’re ironing all the bugs out of these small tours for now. That’s a bit of a problem, but that’s going to ease up and get better, once we get proper sound checks, proper venues, a rock solid tour. And what’s going well with this is I know where everything’s spent, where everything’s going. I have an idea of my debt, what I’m going to have to recoup. It’s limited as far as the people on the business end, so I know exactly who’s involved. So that’s basically it.
Rock My Monkey: Would you say is Cellophane is totally done, or is it safe to say that Monster In The Machine is what Cellophane kind of evolved into?
Shannon Crawford: Well, I mean, I wrote all the songs for Cellophane. And now actually John Chase from Cellophane is playing guitar for the live shows. And Doug recorded all the bass. So there’s definitely an element and a vibe there of it. Now, if James ("Munky" Shaffer) has the money to buy out the old Cellophane record if Monster In The Machine blows up, that’d be cool to re-release it. And I wouldn’t mind actually putting out a second Cellophane record. The songs I write are going to be the songs I write, whether it’s Cellophane or Monster In The Machine. But Monster In The Machine is going to be-that’s what I’m building. I’m establishing a happening here. And that’s, Monster In The Machine is that happening. That is my concept. And if I’m going to write any songs, it’s going to go to what I’m working on right now. Because I mean, there are very few people that can call themselves, for instance, hard to call it Shannon Crawford. It seems a little self-indulgent for me, although there are just amazing people like Jimi Hendrix went by his name, or Jeff Buckley, or Peter Gabriel, or Sting that can pull it off. Or Ben Harper. But for me, I just, I’m just not ready to do that yet. So it’ll be called Monster In The Machine.
Rock My Monkey: Is there any plans for a permanent lineup for Monster In The Machine?
Shannon Crawford: Yeah. Everyone who’s touring is pretty much the permanent lineup. They’re all into it. They love the music. They didn’t record this one, but they will definitely be involved in the next recording. The first one was just me writing music, and I just wanted to make an album, and a beautiful album did come out. Now that I have people involved, they’ll be the ones playing.
Rock My Monkey: Just to have it on record, who actually is in this current touring lineup?
Shannon Crawford: Lats. He goes by Lats. L-A-T-S. Nathan Kerns. That’s his real name. Jake Kuri is on drums. And John Chase is playing guitar. And I’m playing guitar and singing.
Rock My Monkey: What song on this cd do you think has the chance of being your Ace Of Spades, the song fans demand for decades to come?
Shannon Crawford: Well, “Savior”, “Under Your Shadow”, “Don’t”, “One Way Trip”, “Perfect”, and- I love them all. I’m biased. (both laugh) It’s hard for me to answer that. I would say all of them. And it’s not that I think I’m just some musical genius or something, I just love them. But those are the four that stand out as sort of long term hits. This whole record. We could have released this ten years ago, or we could release this ten years for now. Because I wanted to make a timeless record. A non-trendy flash in the pan. I didn’t want to have that. I wanted to make a classic record, because the problem today is that people record one hit. They get signed for that one hit, and the rest of the album is shit. And the result of that is people go and they download that one hit. And no one buys an album anymore to vibe out to the record, to the album, like they did in the 70’s and the 60’s. I want to try to change that by making a good, timeless record.
Rock My Monkey: I hear a video for the song “Savior” has actually been filmed. Is that going to be a standard performance video, or will fans be able to see more of your very beautiful, artistic visuals as well?
Shannon Crawford: Well, it’s performance and concept. We had a very small budget, and it looks amazing because we didn’t do a lot of frivolous spending like everyone does in every field of any business of the world. We did what we needed to do, and the visuals are really cool. It’s a secret though. I think people will be very satisfied with this.
Rock My Monkey: When can we expect that to be released?
Shannon Crawford: What’s that?
Rock My Monkey: When can fans expect to see that?
Shannon Crawford: I’m hoping within a couple of weeks. Very soon. It’s ready to go. We have a gun in the video, and there’s some problems with Mtv. It’s not that I’m glorifying guns, but in the lyrics ‘If I was a big man I’d wave my gun around and we can all fear god.’ And it’s so funny, well, a, the whole concept of fearing god makes no sense to me, but that sort of god fearing religion base also just have this love for guns for some reason. If I were to fear anything, I’d be fearing the guy with the gun, not god. And so that gun in the video is not to glorify guns, but to just make a statement. So it’s been postponed because we have to blur it out and stuff like that.
Rock My Monkey: So is there going to be an uncensored version on like your MySpace or something then?
Shannon Crawford: Oh yeah, totally.
Rock My Monkey: Cool. Now with mentions of big guns and cowboys it almost seems that the current presidential administration was at least partly to blame for the inspiration of the song.
Shannon Crawford: Oh, absolutely. You know what? I have no problem saying they’re just a bunch of cheaters and liars. There’s a documentary called, that I watched yesterday, “Selling Iraq”. It’s a documentary I watched. If you want people to get more into how, what liars and cheaters this administration is, they should go find that documentary, “Selling Iraq”. Basically I absolutely hate them, and I have no problem saying that. I don’t care. They can arrest me or whatever. I think a lot of people hate them, because it’s a money laundering administration. Their payoffs are just disgusting. Part of those payoffs are from the NRA. I can’t think of any form of human that is more evil than that. Just creating a war, having taxpayers pay for it so that their companies that they’re involved with can profit. I mean, Dick Cheney was the CEO of Haliburton, and Haliburton is making billions of dollars off this, and they’re using our soldiers to protect them. And Haliburton is supposed to feed the soldiers, and they’re not even giving them proper clean water. They’re not giving them food. They have to wait in line for an hour to eat. It’s just disgusting. Ironically enough the people who voted for Bush and these scumbags all want to support the troops. But Bush and all of them, they don’t care about the troops. They don’t care about anything but their own profit.
Rock My Monkey: Another very important documentary on this, I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but there’s one called “Bush’s Brain”, which is about Karl Rove, who I myself consider one of the most brilliant, evil maniacal geniuses we’ve had since Adolf Hitler. And it’s beautiful how he stayed in the background, kept the focus off of him, but masterminded this extremely intricate and elaborate plan that he got away with scott free.
Shannon Crawford: They all have. If you’re still recording.
Rock My Monkey: Absolutely.
Shannon Crawford: It’s sort of like in that movie The Devil’s Advocate where Al Pacino says ‘Hey, the 21st century is coming. The new millennium. It’s my time.’ That’s exactly what’s happened. It’s almost like the devil took over in the new millennium, and it’s in the form of George Bush and all his cronies and his gang of thugs.
Rock My Monkey: I actually, when I was watching the making of YouTube thing for “Savior”, I actually thought of another scene from the movie The Devil’s Advocate when you’re talking about vanity. I remember the very final scene in that movie where Al Pacino playing the devil looks at Keanu Reeves’ character, smiles his evil smile and says ‘Ah, vanity. Definitely my favorite sin.’
Shannon Crawford: Look at the-there’s this documentary also called “The War”. In World War II Americans made sacrifices, and all we were asked to do after 9/11 was just go shopping. That’s what they said. Just go shopping, and consume more. Maybe in this time of an oil war, maybe we should, people should stop driving their huge SUV’s. That’s pure vanity. That is pure vanity, and that is killing us. And because of our dependency on oil and these SUVs, we’re enabling terrorists. We’re giving terrorists money. And because of our dependency on oil, these insane, religious fanatical nations who would be benign, rock throwers, now have nuclear weapons because of the power they have achieved from their access to oil, and their ownership of the oil, the well. You know, Black Water should be called Black Gold, because that’s all they’re protecting. I say bring our troops home and let those fuckers die working for Haliburton.
Rock My Monkey: What is the latest on your Orphean movie? Did that ever come out, and will fans be able to get that on DVD anytime soon?
Shannon Crawford: No, we’re still in production on that. We worked on a three minute trailer, and it didn’t work out as well as I’d like. But we’re going to be actually, I’m talking with some people with production companies to get this going. They should, something, I would say in the next year something would be out. Which, and that has a lot do with, it’s sort of about aliens and oil, basically. It’s about aliens and how the aliens need to live on a polluted planet, and there’s a conspiracy. Yeah. Aliens and oil.
Rock My Monkey: From doing my own research on that movie, I kind of wondered, is this going to be sort of like an anime feature?
Shannon Crawford: Yes. Animated.
Rock My Monkey: Oh, it is going to be animated. Okay.
Shannon Crawford: See, the thing is we went to the wrong production company, and they totally botched our three minute trailer we’re going to make. I want it to be old school drawn cell style, almost like an old Betty Boop movie with a little color. That sort of style. But they made really cheesy 3-D animation, and it just looked horrible. James dropped a lot of money and they just butchered it. We just need to take our loss and have the proper production company handle it basically.
Rock My Monkey: When people see Monster In The Machine live, what can people expect from your live shows? Is it more of a stripped kind of thing, or do you guys add any visuals to give it more of a theatrical feel?
Shannon Crawford: Well, I want to add visual and projections with my drawings, animate my drawings that have been animated. But right now, being a new band and opening for people, a lot of times the so-called headlining act won’t let you do that. They don’t want you to upstage them. In the tour I’m on now, we’re pretty much, just the sound alone is upstaging the headliners. When I, back in ’94, November of ’94, I went to the Roxy Theater in L.A. Someone said to me, ‘Hey, we got to go check this guy out. He’s supposed to be really good.’ Just on freak accident I stumbled into the Roxy, and this guy was playing, and his name was Jeff Buckley. And I saw him play, and I was so moved I realized this is what I need to do. Everything else is so miniature in my universe, because I am put on this earth to do that. To move people. And I want people to be moved like they would be moved like they would be moved when they saw him play. I want it to be a spiritual experience. Not to rock out and to hurt each other in the audience, but at the same time not to be sitting cross legged and lighting lighters, either. Just a good show. It’s a good, solid rock show. It has substance. Our show is going to have substance. Hey, I have a distortion pedal. We rock. But there’s true moving substance there.
Rock My Monkey: Through all this are you still able to fit in other artistic outlets, such as your painting?
Shannon Crawford: Not now. I need to take about six months off and really just get my tour situation, just get a groove on that. And once I’ve established a groove with solid touring, then I can start incorporating that into my day. But right now with interviews and dealing with blogs and web pages and just dealing with everything else, which seems to be 90% other than the actual performance, I need to learn to organize it to fit it in. Plus there’s space. I paint really big. We’re in a van right now. Once we get a bus and there’s more actual physical space, I’ll be able to paint more. Right now I’m homeless. I don’t have a home. I gave up my loft. I don’t have the money. I made sacrifices because I really believe in this, so I’m sort of homeless right now.
Rock My Monkey: Before I ask my final question, is there anything you’d like to say to the fans of Monster In The Machine?
Shannon Crawford: I just want to say thank you. Thank you for believing. Because of their love for it, this music can be better. I’m not saying I’m some musical savior that will change the way people will look and listen to music, but I just want to say thank you, because they’re helping start a new standard. For instance, Britney Spears had the number one iTunes download last week, and that’s heartbreaking because it’s shit. And I have no problem saying that.
Rock My Monkey: Absolutely.
Shannon Crawford: It’s just over-produced bullshit. And this is true substance, and it’s true art. And those people are the ones who get it. And the people that follow them are going to be the ones who get it. And hopefully it’ll create a new standard and we can start growing as a human race, really, artistically.
Rock My Monkey: I do have one final question. Every year we choose one final question that we ask every single band, from classic rock legends to the most extreme death metal bands at the end of every interview. Partially to stump people, but also to see who kind of wimps out and doesn’t answer. This year I’m asking people to look into their crystal ball and predict what political figure, world leader, musician, celebrity, anybody world wide famous, who do you think might die before the end of the year?
Shannon Crawford: World famous? Any kind of celebrity, any public figure, basically, right?
Rock My Monkey: Politician, anything, yeah.
Shannon Crawford: Before the end of the year. Who do I think will die before the end of the year? Who would I like to see die before the end of the year? I can’t say that one. (laughs) There’s a lot of people I’d like to see die, but the bad guys usually don’t. And usually it’s the good guys that we love. You know, I don’t know, man. It’s a tough one. I don’t know.
Rock My Monkey: Alright. I thank you very much for doing the interview. Anybody that’s listening to the audio version can go to RockMyMonkey.com for the full featured version with clickable links, readable text, and many more wonderful features. I’m asking anybody that’s reading this to click on the album cover above and below this interview to purchase Butterfly Pinned by Monster In The Machine. And I do hope to see you guys up on tour in the Northwest sometime soon. Thank you very much for your time.
