Let’s do an interview!! I’m in the mood! Ha.
Ok let me type on up.. How much coffee you got?
We can do it right here right now
I’m ready!!
Ok dokey!!!
Ok to start with the basic boring questions.
Why the name crime rock?
We started with a different name, but we called our genre Crime Rock, Cuz we are a rock band that does crime fiction. No one could remember the old name, but they would say, how is that Crime Rock thing going. It just worked out that way.
Keep it simple I guess.
Gidget Bates
The house in the video “Stay on tonight “appears to be the house from*
90210?
It’s an art deco house from the 20’s. Our good friend and fan Gretchen Bonaduce was moving and we just kinda took over the place for 48 hours before the next people came in. We were totally lucky.
Was the house haunted as you appeared to be?
It could be, but we didn’t see anything. The ghost could have been scarred of the whips, chains, and handcuffs we brought onto the set! Ha.
Was the video and idea of a director or was this clearly your own idea? I thought the video was great BTW. And if I had any choice in ghosts myself I think you would be good choices.
It was my idea and I was the co-director. We couldn’t find a desert motel that would let us film for cheap, so when the house became an option, we just jumped on it and changed the story.
Gidget Bates
Oooooh a desert motel… That appeals to me in a very Norman Bates kind of way.
I just thought jaded ghosts bored of watching people have sex would be fun, and it would still allow us to make a sexy video without it looking like a lame hip hop video.
So I assume you do believe in ghosts?
Our bass player Andrew is very much interested in them. I’m not exactly sure myself. I do believe a lot is going on around us that we can’t see though.
If you could be a ghost, theoretically, not saying go off and die right now or anything… Is there anyone in particular you’d haunt? Cause watching young people have sex would get sooo dull after maybe.. The first time.
Hmm, it’s a big world. If I was able to do some haunting, I think a whole lot of people would be in trouble.
Ok.. That’s kinda how I am about it!
Ok so now on to other shit…I notice in the band bio there is only two of you listed.. Are the other guy’s guns for hire?
I’m not sure where it’s listed like that, must be glitch on our end. No, all 5 of us are in the band. But we started off as a 2 piece. It was be an artifact from our first couple shows.
Where does it say that, I must change it?
The Facebook page! You better beat your page admin for that!
I don’t see Mike Patton as an influence but he clearly is..Which is very very cool to me as I am a huge fan of his.
I’m prepared to whoop myself!
Are you a fan of faith no more as a whole with original singer Chuck Mosley or Just a Mike Patton fan?
I love trying to cover new sonic territory. Mike does that. I started out doing hip hop. But I’ve made jungle drum and bass, punk rock, reggae, jazz, and trip hop. At an early age I got into Mike Patton. It made me have no fear of any genre and I’ve enjoyed making a lot of music and working with a lot of musician as a result of not having that fear.
All of FNM is good to me. He were funky music for heshers! I was a young kid in LA in the 80’s listening to Boogie Down Productions and Public Enemy, so FNM’s rhythm section really helped me get into rock on a deeper level.
I saw Public enemy in the early 90’s. I think most bands need to grasp that rhythm section concept. I’ve seen both incarnation of FNM live and met both singers. Two totally different guys. But they prove that it was the band as whole concept not a lead singer driven band.
Yep, remember this was all before Fred Biscuit gave rockers who loved hip hop a bad name!
Not sure if you would agree with this as you also love Soundgarden but Chris Cornell proved the lead singer issue by going solo.. He needed Soundgarden to complete his act.
Fred was something else. He even ruined the word nookie.
I think the whole lead singer leaving situation goes like this. When you’re in the band, you’re not thinking as much but when your own your own you have all this crap going on in your head and there is not enough noise from the band to shut it up.
That’s kinda perfect..
It’s like when you sing a song with the band in the studio and it goes great, but then the producer wants to you to stay after and do some overdubs and everyone else goes home, and now it’s just you and the microphone and you start to sound like a different person.
I can say that from personal experience, that’s why I only record my vocals live with the band now. I hate getting in that head space.
The last record I cut 99% live. The last 1% was for a couple mess ups that I had to touch up.
If I wanted to see singers on their own without a band I’d probably listen to auto tune shit… Which I don’t…Though I do have my guilty pleasures. They don’t make crooners anymore like they used too.. So unless you are singing standards if you don’t play an instrument I hardly have a care anymore.
I love when a band can play live.
No one has to pay the dues anymore.
Tell me about the noir? Is it just the crime books or it the films and attitude too?
It’s everything! Noir is all around us and certainly me.
My dad died of an alleged overdose when I was only 4. I got his death certificate about 8 years ago. I started asking questions and found some foul play.
Really? I’m so sorry. Are you writing it all down?
Crime Rock is my way of dealing with his death and filling in the details of his last days. So I feel like a detective when I’m writing Crime Rock songs.
I love forensics.
I’ve turned the dark into the light, so to speak.
But noir is obsession, and alienation. Noir is Sid and Nancy, Noir is punk rock for sure.
Did you ever think that maybe you needed to be a true crime writer or go into forensics as a field?
No, to be a writer you need to spell. I can’t spell for shit, that’s why I sing@
Didn’t Ellroy get into writing because of his mother’s strange death?
No I can’t spell for shit it’s why we pay spellcheckers:)
I share a lot in common with James Ellroy.
I love him as a writer but sometimes he gets too intense and personal. I like the women writers such as Aphrodite Jones and Ann Rule
Sometimes I find myself yelling at his books… Dude this isn’t about your mother… Move on!
I kinda like watching people eat razorblades; perhaps I’m sicker than others. But I like to see it cut up people from the inside.
With that said, to also like to see scars heal.
We all have sick fantasies… California drinking water perhaps… Jaded childhood?
I was burned as a kid.. I am very obsessed with scars.
Malathion… Let’s blame the mosquitoes.
Makes sense.
I have no clue what Malathion is?
When I was a kid up near SF they sprayed the fields with helicopters for months every summer
And then we took our skateboards and played in it..
When I hear some music I think back to movies and or books.. So far you have made me think of Altman’s “Short Cuts” and the Elvis Cole series by Robert Crais.. With a hair of Ridley Pearson thrown in.
And of course every veronica lake movie made.
And roger rabbit
Well I am from LA, Hollywood is in my blood!
When I started the band I used to look at Weegee pictures for hours to really get into the black and white pictures and put myself alongside the dead bodies and pools of blood.
So you must have many theories on the black dahlia?
You’d do very well in Seattle.. It’s dark and creepy always.. With sooo much crime to obsess over
Seems like a doctor did it, the body was cut up with precision. They don’t teach that in shop class.
The murder scene would have had to been in a coroner’s office or vet office. Someplace without a lot of patients.. It would not have been done all in one day… So a doc office was out.
I do love Seattle, and not just cuz of the music from the 90’s. I love AMC’s The Killing. That’s set in Seattle and so is the Murder City Devils. They are a huge influence on CR.
I lived there for 14 years till I could no longer afford it.
I love subpop and the posies.. Soundgarden and Tad.. Not so much nirvana though.
My first week there I went around to look for the hookers in the streetwise documentary, and then did a self guided Ted Bundy tour.
So it all makes sense why you like Crime Rock!
Ridley Pearson set a lot of his books there. Very detailed, heavy into forensics… Almost like if Ann rule grew a penis and wrote crime novels.
Exactly… When I saw Paul Brazil’s article on you I said this is sooo much more than good music… The music is a side effect of the personality.
I’m sure if you eat enough of Dick’s late night burgers in Seattle, anyone can grow a penis. I think it’s on their menu.
When I gave up food with hormones I realized I could still eat at dicks as the rats weren’t fed hormones
Ann Rule is the shit… She is an amazing woman… She has balls bigger than a man with the hugest penis.
I must check out her balls some time. I haven’t been introduced to her until today.
She worked a suicide hotline with Ted Bundy… Seriously… Can anybody be cooler?
You need to read her stuff. I sat in on a few of her lectures. She would probably make James Ellroy’s skin crawl with her stories
I am officially warned!
4/10, 3:34pm
She worked with the Seattle police dept in the seventies… That is how she got started writing crime… Wrote noir too.
You need to write shit down… You’d be good at it… Pay some minion you keep in your bad Ronald room some money to edit and you are all good.
I was told by another writer to read twice as much as I write. But I did write a 4 or 5 page story for Crime Rock’s Episode Two. The lyrics and music are all finished. As a band we have played 5 out of the 9 songs that will be on the album. We may add one more song to have 10 songs but we can tell the story in 9 songs.
I could be the reverse Stephen King. He was a writer that started a rock band. I can be a rocker who starts writing novels, like Nick Cave!
Go for as many as you need… In this day and age with bandcamp to sell you can do whatever you want?
Do you like to creep out the band mates a bit? Or are they all as creepy with blood and guts as you?
We have yet to tour yet; it’s coming later this year, so we’ll have the time to find out.
I look forward to the stories you tell with that one.. Keep a blog
Buy a deck of serial killer trading cards and pull them randomly and watch for reactions
better yet on the itinerary mark off famous killings near each venue you play.. Keep it in the glove box for the road trip.
It’s pretty hard to keep a drummer in this city, but I’ll see what shit I can pull
Make him sign a death clause in case he blows up.
I was supposed to talk to you about music huh? I have an awful attention span… I get over excited.
That’s crime rock for ya; it brings us a lot of shit.
I kinda get excited about crime…
Then again I love Muppets… I wish I had a way to combine the two. Then again with my attention span I think it would be cool to put Paul Williams in a suit with you and let him sing with you.
I’ve hung out with Paul Williams, he’s one of the funniest guys I’ve had the pleasure to be around.
He is my favorite songwriter.
He is also my favorite Muppet next to Gonzo.
Ok… Back to the music stuff… Which now seems less excited than Brandon obsessing over dead bodies…
You got a new record you are working on..Is this also an indie release?
So far yes. I just released a new Ep with 6 songs. We are just handing it out to people in LA and releasing it as singles on the internet. We have a live record coming out in the summer which was just mastered and the artwork is being finished now. And yes, have written a new record called Episode Two: Little Victim. We hope to go into the studio by early June???
So far everything is done by Crime Rock; we’ll see how the year goes as far as working with someone else.
Also I see that crime rock opened for the reigning monarchs…I’m a fan. Was Michael Eisenstein super cool…? Did you swoon in his presence?
A mutual friend in the Dance Hall Pimps introduced us. Michael is a real sweet guy, I didn’t really know about his story until we had breakfast together once. The singer Greg also does a lot. He wrote a book that got turned into a movie, and he does stand up. Those guys are great.
And yes I am stalking your pictures and I see an acting gig with one of my daughter’s fave actors Chris O’Dowd… She just loves the IT crowd.. Are you also an actor or was that a one off?
I was as a kid. I hated it. I had a small part in “Frankie Go Boom” from 2011. But it’s not something I’m actively pursuing. I’m not opposed; it’s just not my scene.
Ok so I have kept you an awfully long time.. How should we end this..? What would you like to say to the peeps? FYI I’m up for discussing crime with you anytime.. This was fun.
Let’s just end it by plugging the new single, “Stop Looking for Love”. We are releasing it April 29th! And mentioning the website at www.crimerock.com
WOODY RADIO BLOG 
Good stuff. Paul Williams is great!