Failure in the 90s After that epic Tool concert at the Bill Graham, we caught up with opening band Failure to get the scoop on their own comeback and future exploits. They’ll be headlining two nights back-to-back this week, Wednesday and Thursday, at the Great American Music Hall. Here’s our interview with drummer Kellii Scott. Wow! Failure is back! All the 90โs nerds are kind of going crazy right now. I saw you play in San Francisco with Tool for the first time and that was really cool. Oh yeah! That was a great show! We did the two nights at the Bill Graham. Yeah, I was there for the second night. Mhm. Had you seen us before? Iโd never seen you before and I knew you toured with Tool a lot in the 90โs and I thought โWow! Itโs all coming back.โ Yeah, we were actually quite pleased when they asked us if we could come out and join them on those shows, especially since weโre just getting this all back up and running, it only seemed fitting for our first outing to be with those guys. Everything went really great. Great crowd. The crowds today were much more civil than I seem to recall them being back in the day. Yeah! I saw only two mosh pits and that was strange. I thought there would be more. Thatโs very cool. So, where have you guys toured? How has it been going? Is it hectic? No no no, itโs been pretty light actually. We started out with that first show here in Los Angeles at the El Rey and then we just jumped out with the guys from Tool, and that was only, I think like nine shows. The two in San Francisco, Reno, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Austin, Houston, Fresno, and San Diego. OK, thatโs quite a lot of major cities there. Yeah, the first half of it we did in a little splitter and then the Texas shows and the Phoenix shows. We flew out to all of those shows. But now we had a couple weeks off, and now weโre back to rehearsals, putting together our own show which is gonna be pretty cool. Itโs gonna be super long. Itโs just going to be us. Weโre not taking any opening bands. And the first show of our actual tour will be there, in San Francisco at the Great American Music Hall. Yeah, I know where that is. Awesome! Yeah, weโre doing two nights there. Itโs the 14th and 15th of May. Excellent. Iโll have to check that out, definitely. Itโs gonna be cool. Iโm really looking forward to it. Weโre doing more of our own set, so itโll be somewhere around 2 hours. 2 hours and 20 minutes. Are you going to be playing most of your songs off of Fantastic Planet or are you going from Comfort and Magnified as well? Weโre playing a lot of songs from Fantastic Planet. I think weโre playing maybe four to five songs from Magnified and I think two or three from Comfort. And weโre gonna throw in some extra surprises here and there for people. New material? Yeah… maybe. Well, it’ll be new to us. Weโre definitely playing some stuff we havenโt played on tour before. But I donโt want to give away the surprise. Thatโs why everybodyโs got to come out to the show. I wonโt push and prod too much then. Yeah, weโve been reading social media a little bit and weโre throwing in some things that seem like a good portion of people would like to hear that theyโve never heard us do before. Awesome. Thatโs excellent. Speaking of the people, I was gonna ask, have you noticed any difference in your fan base vs that of the 90โs, or does there seem to be purely a cult following? I would say itโs definitely a cult following thing. Thereโs definitely like some die hards. Thereโs definitely some people more our age that would come to see us in the 90โs, but thereโs also a large portion of the crowd that are people who have never seen us play before like under the age of 30, which I think we all found quite surprising. That was the one thing that happened when we did the LA show that we werenโt even expecting at all. That hadnโt even dawned on us that there would be so many younger people there that hadnโt seen us play before. It was kind of bewildering. It was awesome but really strange at the same time. Wow. Yeah. Definitely. Iโm sure everyone who went out to see Tool were like โOh! I remember these guysโ and all of a sudden you have all these new fans. Yeah, yeah. I think we also picked up some of Tool’s newer fans because a large portion of those crowds had also already sold out all of those shows before we were even added to the bill. I think we were added to the bill a week before the shows started. So there werenโt a whole lot of people who knew they were buying tickets to see us play. I know you have a lot of younger fans now, and with the age of internet and with new technology and ways of streaming and ways to get music other than just going to the record store, whether it be legal or illegal, do you think that this new streaming culture will help you gain exposure, or do you think it would hurt your record sales? Well, I canโt really speak to record sales because weโve never really had them. Even back in the day. I fully embrace all the newer technology, the social media, I think itโs great. I think itโs really really great. I mean it canโt do anything but spread the word more, and I mean, Iโm pretty certain that all the new people that are showing up to our shows are totally a result of that. People just file sharing, I mean our records havenโt really been in stores in like 17 years. Itโs not like you can go down the street and buy one of our records. You can get it off of iTunes and stuff, but I would guess that at least 70% of anyone whoโs into us today got into us because they were turned on to us from a friend or internet source. Thatโs actually surprising because I was going to go down to my record store today and look for Fantastic Planet, but now that you told me this, wow, I did not know that you werenโt actually selling this. Yeah, I mean, back in the day, the record label only made a certain number of copies and our records didnโt sell all that well, so if you found a copy, that copyโs been sitting there since back then. Other than that, our back catalog was purchased from Warner Brothers and that company has decided to put out vinyl of each one of the records. Like over the last three years, theyโve managed to get vinyl copies of each one, but even those were only a thousand copies. If you were to find our stuff, you would have to get it somewhere off of the web. So are you guys kind of going back on to a record label, or are you going to release new albums and start selling them? I mean I know youโre probably producing on your own. Weโre not sure yet. This whole thing kind of got back together by us writing and recording some new material, and we were just going to do that, but then all these other interests started popping up, and now weโre kind of in full fledged, weโre-a-band- again-and-touring-around mode. And I think weโre going to continue to write and record some more stuff and just kind of see what unfolds as we get further along in this adventure. Weโre still working on stuff, like weโre nowhere near done with having a new record finished, but hopefully some opportunities will present themselves as we get closer to that over the end of the year and the beginning of next year. I definitely look forward to your pursuits. I know you were there for the most part for the writing of Magnified and Fantastic Planet as the drummer. But out of all the albums, do you have a favorite, musically speaking? Theyโre each so different from one another. I would have to say that Fantastic Planet probably is my favorite. Just because it was our last record and I felt that we were able to achieve a sonic goal. Finally, we had a record that sounded the way it was supposed to sound. And that also seems to be the one that has the most exposure out of all the records. And thereโs so many songs on there. I mean thereโs as many songs on that record as there are on almost the first two records combined. So itโs kind of like two records. But I would have to say that, only in the sense that all the songs are really flushed out and really finished. And I think that we just managed to get it right on that record. The other records kind of had a struggle and natural progression towardsโit doesnโt sound quite like we hear ourselves. Once we got a little closer, and Fantastic Planet pretty much summed it all up, what we were going for. I still have a blast playing live. I love playing the stuff off Comfort and Magnified just as much as the stuff off of Fantastic Planet. In the past, you were described in various news outlets as kind of a grunge off shoot, but you werenโt really grunge, right? No, not at all. Weโre all serious about what we bring to this band. Grunge seemed, I donโt want to put it down, or beneath us, it seemed a lot lazier than what we were trying to achieve. Much more like relaxed and sort of like: throw it out there and see what happens. Whereas our stuff was very labored. A lot of thought and energy and work went into what we were doing. It almost feels progressive in a way. It sort of is progressive, especially as a progression from the grunge stuff that was going on at the time. You know Iโm not really sure what it is. Some people call it space rock. I think that could be a little closer of a description. But when I think of the word space, I donโt necessarily think of outer space, I think of the space in the music. We definitely achieved a lot of spatialโumโฆ oh whatโs the word Iโm looking for… you know what I mean. Yes, well yeah. I think so. If you mean like spatial presence, then yeah. If itโs difficult to classify yourselves genre-wise, what are your influences as a band? I think the normal stuff. We all really like the 80โs stuff, like Cars and The Cure. Greg really likes Japan a lot. And we definitely dig Radiohead. I mean back then when we were writing that music, Radiohead was just kind of appearing on the music scene. I like a lot of 70โs rock stuff also, like I grew up on Zeppelin and AC/DC and Rush. You know, kind of a hodge podge, like I loved everything from George Michael to David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, Killing Joke. I think thatโs definitely representative in our music too. It definitely seems like we have a very eclectic taste in music and sensibility. Much more than just standard grunge, right? Yeah. I think if we only listened to rock music, our stuff would sound a lot more like grunge. Yeah. Definitely. Well, weโre coming into the end of the interview. And again, you donโt have to answer, but what can we expect from Failure in the coming years. A new album, more surprises, not gonna tell? Well, first weโre gonna do this 28 date tour, which is a lot considering we havenโtโ played music together in 17 years. But then weโre definitely gonna come back and start to put some of our business structure in place as far as finding a home for our record and figuring out how we want to move forward with that. There will definitely be a new record. And you know, some more tours. You know, the usual: lots of great tours, lots of good times and a lot more music. I look forward to it, most definitely. And hopefully weโll see you at that San Francisco show, one of the two of them. Definitely! I did not even know that you were touring there. So Iโm happy I have this information. Yeah, itโs May 14th and 15th at the Great American Music Hall. I will look you up. Do you have any last words for your listeners? Words of wisdom? Anything youโd like to impart? You know, I would. Personally, I would like to thank anyone who may be reading or listening for continuing to care about the band and our music all these years. I mean it really really feels great. Itโs just been amazing coming back and playing these few shows. I can only imagine what itโs going to be like when we start up this tour, but itโs pretty amazing. Awesome! Alright, well that was Kellii Scott with Failure. Theyโll be touring May 14th and 15th at the Great American Music Hall. And you can send people to our Failure Band Facebook Page also. Theyโll be able to get all the upcoming information. There you have it! Thank you Kellii! Thank you too! Have a great evening. 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