John Buckner Crawford (born January 17, 1960) is a singer-songwriter whose efforts with the band 'Berlin' were an essential part of their rise to fame in the early 1980s. After 'Berlin' disbanded John formed 'The Big F'

With Crawford on bass and vocals, The Big F’s self-titled debut album for Elektra in 1988 represented a kind of experiment in anti-commercialism, with its dark themes and aggressive hard rock sound. Before courting the attention of record labels, Crawford and Brill deliberately concealed their identities to avoid any association with Berlin. Crawford took on the name John Shreve while Brill became Rob Donin. Mark Christian rounded out the trio in his role as guitarist. They contributed a cover version of the MC5 song "Kick Out the Jams" to the 1990 Elektra compilation Rubáiyát.

The Big F’s second album, Is, was released on Chrysalis in 1993, and like the first, failed to find a large audience, possibly due to the dense, dark sound of the music and challenging lyrics. For the Is tour, the band hired a bassist, allowing Crawford/Shreve to concentrate solely on vocals. In 1995, The Big F called it quits once and for all.

In 2005 John self released the album Surrender, this release represents 12 tracks of Crawford’s masterful songwriting and vocals emphasizing his newfound faith, along with his precise guitar and bass playing and drum programming. The hard-rocking album has the electric guitar as its sonic focal point, all of it based around Crawford’s uncanny knack for generating lyrical and melodic hooks

This was followed by an album of new material titled 8 Days was released in August 2006, and Crawford is reportedly working on a new album of material, to be called Tarantula that he says is closer to Berlin’s early 80s sound than anything he’s released in the past 20 years. According to Crawford's posts on his message board, due to the financial expense involved in self releasing his two solo CDs, he may offer MP3 downloads of this new electronic music, song by song, as he completes them.

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