Blog•September 16, 2012 8:28 AM ET

Make Me Famous borrows a van and pisses off its owners

Since Piscataway, NJ band Sirena is breaking up, they aren't worried about the repercussions of publicly calling out a bigger band. They let Make Me Famous borrow their van, and they aren't pleased with the results.

"So since it is going to come to an end, I don't give a shit if we burn bridges. Right now some of the worst people I've had the displeasure of working with are Outerloop Management and Make Me Famous. We arranged, through outerloop, for Make Me Famous to rent our van for a tour this Summer, which was cool since we weren't using it much at the time because we got fucked last minute by The Paramedic because their manager was a stupid asshole and said they would be on a tour I worked 90+ hours on booking myself and they bailed out.

"Now, Make Me Famous had a few issues with our van and had to replace a few parts, all well and fine and they deducted those costs from the payment, even though parts they said they fixed and had receipts for werent fixed, like the out headlight, and the van came back with more damage, an empty tank of gas (the contract said they had to return it full), 3 lights missing from the trailer, a hubcap missing from the van, the exhaust brackets broken leaving the exhaust laying on the axel, a wire box hanging loose under the van, and what looks like fucking chocolate smeared all over the windows inside the van. The van was returned to us 12 days late, and the bands manager didn't even know it wasnt returned (like wtf right?) and after the date it was supposed to be used it was still being driven around and GOT A SPEEDING TICKET THAT THEY WONT PAY FOR. What the actual fuck? So its been two months of getting the run around from them and I'm fucking tired of it, so flame is happening, they will probably all untag themselves and still not resolve the situation. People take advantage of bands all the time like this, I tried to handle it professionally for the longest time, but when someone fucks with you too much its time to put them on blast. Let it be known."

Of course, just five hours later, Make Me Famous issued the following: "Spreading LIES will NEVER get you anywhere, kids."

Why are we posting about this? Because that's what we do. And it's Sunday. Nothing happens on Sunday in the music world. Most importantly, this story involved smeared chocolate!

UPDATE 9/17/2012: Now is the time for the inevitable update. Since we posted our original item here on the matter, Sirena has backed off their tone a bit and even offered an apology of sorts to Make Me Famous:

"So I removed all the posts about the van situation because it was making too much of a mess and I didnt intend for so many people to care or to flame on Make Me Famous so hard. As I am told by one of the band members, who was actually nice enough to message me directly about this, the manager who was handling the whole process doesnt even work at outerloop anymore but failed to communicate to everyone what was going on. This at least made the band aware of what was happening and put things at a satisfactory stage for us. Thank you to everyone who helped the awareness get through. I apologize for how it got towards Make Me Famous, and resolution has been met. Thanks again everyone."

In the interim, we also received an explanation from Make Me Famous' management team. Said explanation included background emails and images of receipts, etc. We won't bother reprinting everything since you'll not doubt get the idea:

See the emails below in which we agreed to a per day rate for the van. We would guaranteed (per Serina's contract) that we would get a vehicle in good working order. When Make Me Famous picked up the van we found out THE NEXT DAY that the van was in need of new tires. In fact the mechanic said that they were completely worn. Keep in mind this was after they had driven 6 hours away from where they picked the van up. The 1st receipt from Sears will show the date of 6-21-12 (day after the van pick-up) in which we paid out of our own pocket for the necessary repairs. Then halfway through the tour we had to deal with another $1300.00+ in NECESSARY repairs that was again paid out of the bands pocket. Now of course we would cover all other maintenance costs (oil changes, etc.) but if you agree to rent a vehicle from someone then you expect it to be safe, reliable and in working order. So we told the owners that we would have to charge them for those repairs against the rental rate. It tunrs out that they owed us money! We put more money out of our own pocket into their van then the actual cost of the rental!

We thought it would be ridiculous for us to insist that they CREDIT us for the repair so we said we could just make it even. Check out the receipts (it contains the van VIN number). Check out the email correspondence below as well. We did in fact communicate this with Serina as shown below.

As for the gas not being filled when we returned it. He is correct on that. This was simple human error.

We take full responsibility for the chocolate smear. Not sure how that actually even got there.

Well, folks, looks like everything has been taken care of. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted ;-)

Tags: Sirena Make Me Famous

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theironsheik 9/16/2012 5:41:36 AM

Who fcking cares about either band?

Make Me Famous borrows a van and pisses off its owners

35 comments

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