A Spectacular Failure

I started ASF up back in early 2006. I was writing songs on my acoustic that I felt were too mellow for GaGaSdaN, which is funny because we’ve had some pretty light songs in our song list. I was an angst-ridden 21 year old back then, so a lot of my songs were pretty scathing and about heartbreak. Total emo, I know. I couldn’t help it. Dashboard and City and Colour were and still are pretty big influences, as are Team Sleep and Deftones. So I had a handful of these acoustic strummers I would just play in my room. I wasn’t ready to unleash it on the world. I had my other band and I didn’t want to take away from that. I finally performed “Closing Night” at a talent show at UTSA, to a decent sized audience. People dug it and they wanted more. I did a few shows here and there, mainly opening for GaGaSdaN. I hadn’t yet networked to open mic and solo shows just yet. Plus, I was still in college, so there really wasn’t a whole lot of time left over to work on ASF shows and such.

In 2009, I started playing in Fall of Idols. GaGaSdaN had called it a day and I was busy prepping this new project for its first show. It went spectacularly well, no pun intended. FoI was taking up all my time as far as musical priorities were concerned. Then Bob moved to LA and we took the rest of the year off. It wasn’t intentional, but it just kinda happened that way. I had reconnected with Gibbz from GaGaSdaN and we jammed with some friends a few times, but nothing came of it. It was then that he brought up ASF. We spent November and December recording some tracks in his garage, which became the “Songs from the Taqueria” EP. Two of the songs from that session, “Death Bird” and my cover of “Marvin’s Room” from Drake, put the idea in my head that maybe, just maybe, this could work with a full instrumental ensemble. However, GaGaSdaN reunited in spring of 2012, so once again, ASF took the back burner.

After a few months of doing shows with GaGaSdaN again, the band basically paused progress on recording a demo when my father died. That was a really rough patch for me. I had been through other personal things and the death of my father kinda just put me out of commission. Picking myself back up from the wreckage, I wrote “1455,” a song I dedicate to the memory of my father. I wrote it originally on a seven string electric guitar, but I decided to use it for ASF. I transposed it to the proper tuning and strummed it out on guitar. I kept hearing a full instrumentation arrangement in my head, so I decided it was time for ASF to go full electric. Aaron from Fall of Idols and Sam from GaGaSdaN/Rosedale Highs were glad to jam with me, as I have enjoyed playing music with them in the past. It was then that A Spectacular Failure evolved into a power trio. We played some shows and things were going really well. I was building up a pretty solid following with the band. I asked my good friend Vincent Moreno to join us on second guitar. He picked up the songs pretty damn quick and has been a welcome addition to the camp.

Currently we are working on some recordings that I hope to have out by the holidays. Until then, keep watching this page for all the latest on A Spectacular Failure.