Matt meets Vin - 2001-2002
Vin: 2002. Ten years ago. That's when it all really started. That's when I met Matt
"The story of Reported Failure goes back to 2002 when Vin Peters, the kid who lived and breathed music, met Matt Collins, the aspiring musician trying to use and grow his skills. But the story goes back further...

Vin Peters was born in 1985 near Sacramento. He was the youngest of three siblings. They all played piano. His whole family. Vin started. He never finished."

The video shows Vin sitting with a black-red background behind him as he starts to talk. Then a home video of Vin at about ten years old playing the guitar is shown quiet enough that Vin is still heard talking but the acoustic guitar playing a simple chord progression with little fills can be heard. The guitar sounds a little bit out of tune. Vin is small so he can barely hold it right. The frets buzz. The neck is bent. But it's a guitar.

Vin: My family all played piano or violin. I was put on piano. I had no passion for it. I played for years. As a kid I was kind of rebellious earlier than most kids are. I was kinda like 'Piano? Thats what both of my sisters and my parents do. Lets try something different'. By ten was like 'fuck that. Lets play some metal'. I could barely hold the guitar but I still played. It wasn't until twelve or thirteen that I got so I didnt suck.

"Meanwhile over the sierra nevada mountains Matt Collins was finding music on his own not because he really wanted to but because it was his best option."

Matt is shown briefly talking with the same black-red background and then a series of photographs of a very young looking Matt Collins up until his teenage years fly across the screen.

Matt: I had moved around a lot as a kid. My mom finally when I was fourteen just couldn't handle me and I was sent to live with my dad on a farm in Nevada. That sucked. I was this gangly kid who thought he was tough and was picking fights with anyone I could. Then I got sent out to Nevada. The school there was farm kids and jocks and I was this California kid who wasnt good at sports and had never been on a farm before in my life. I got my ass kicked a few times. The only kids there who werent farmers or athletes was a group of kids who were into music so I just hung out with them because they didnt want to kick my ass. So then I picked up a guitar.

"Although his time in Nevada is what introduced Matt to music, he didnt stay. He was too much trouble there and he went back to California. He and his mom moved to Sacramento, and that is where Reported Failure started. But it didn't start with Reported Failure. A series of other projects existed and transformations happened before Reported Failure took the shape fans are familiar with."

Images of the Sacramento area and the farm in Nevada flow through the screen and then cut back to Vin.
Vin: In 2001 I was playing in a band called The Republic of China. It was interesting. I played guitar and sang. We were basically doing Alice in Chains covers. We played lots of grunge and some classic rock.

Vin's interview fades away and is replaced by footage of a basement. It was late 2001 and a young Vin Peters is standing in a basement. An obnoxious amplifier tone pierces the atmosphere. random drums are hit. Vin looks around at three other guys. They immediately blast the intro to Alice in Chains's "Man in the Box". Ten kids crowd around them and three of them pretend to be into it. Vin begins singing awkwardly. The sound is terrible. The guitar and drums are too loud. The bass may as well not exist. Vin's vocals can be heard but he has to shout. He starts picking the mic stand up a few inches and walking around the basement. As the chorus comes the noise explodes into just fuzz. The melody barely seeps through the noise. Vin jumps up and down trying to get the ten kids excited. Then he picks up a guitar. The lead guitar sings above the rest of the noise as Vin improvises trying to play a sweep picking solo but it is sloppy and anticlimactic. This slowly fades out to Matt being interviewed....


Matt: Then I got to school. The new highschool. I was scared. First day I go and I see these three kids at lunch. They've each got an acoustic guitar and they're playing this song by the band The Movielife. Two of them are really into it but the other one is just following along. I'm thinkin 'Damn I love that band. These guys could be my friends.' Then suddenly they play this little breakdown and the other kid, the one who wasnt into it, he just goes. It was ridiculous. He just played this solo and no one in Nevada could play like that. I'd never been to a rock concert before so this kid was the best guitar player I'd ever seen. I finally got the courage at the end of lunchtime to go talk to them. That kid was Vin.

Coming up.... The start of the Vin-Matt friendship, some bloke named Billie Beckett rocks open mic night, and a band called Other Side plays their first real gig.