Category: Artists (Page 172 of 262)

It’s been quite some time since we’ve seen a new episode of VH-1’s “Bands Reunited” – though the old episodes still pop up on VH-1 Classic once in awhile – and while that might be because lots of artists were inspired by the show, cut to the chase, and got themselves back together, it’s equally possible that this story got around.

Surely, no one’s naive enough to believe that you’re seeing everything that happened, as it happened, on an episode of “Bands Reunited,” but this decidedly-detailed discussion of Information Society lead singer Kurt Harland’s experiences with Aamer Haleem and company is enough to make anyone gun-shy about reuniting their band.

Two highlights to entice you to click and read the whole thing:

Voice-Talent guy asks me a series of run-of-the-mill interview questions, nothing too interesting. Someone had, however, provided him with a great deal of random and extremely obscure trivia. He asked about “Bug Summer,” which was a humorous term Paul and I gave to the summer of ’84 when we were living together in Minneapolis. Why? It was as though they had received a grab-bag of factoids with no way to interpret them. (And, of course, I expect this was, in fact, the case.) Eventually, he focused on Amanda, which was kind of odd, since she was only in the band for 2 of InSoc’s 16 years. Whatever. He began to pick and pick and pick on the question of why Amanda left. I felt it was too personal for public consumption and I declined to answer. First nicely, then firmly. Eventually he says, smugly: “Well, we already talked to Amanda and she told us it was because she was addicted to heroin.” I found this very annoying and said “Then why are you asking me?”
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I guess that, during that conference call, they had gotten the impression that I wanted to get paid. I think I said something like, “Taking time off work to drive to L.A. to do a free show and be on TV so that Viacom Inc. can enhance shareholder value just isn’t something I want to do.” Somehow, they took that to mean that I was asking for money. So one of them offers to pay me. I pointed out that, since I didn’t want to do it, my price would be higher than I’m worth, and that when they multiply that by 4, it would just break their budget. The guy points out that he’s only extending this offer to me, and not the other bandmembers. I was stunned. Can you believe that? They thought that I would take money, knowing that my bandmates were not getting paid. It is unbelievable! This is when I began to feel that they really had no respect for me at all.