This year has been full of surprises in the rock genre, with bands like Guns N’ Roses touring with its classic lineup or AC/DC touring with Axl Rose as a frontman, but another astonishing moment was Misfits announcing their reunion with its classic lineup for the Riot Fest. Arranging the reunion with Glen Danzig, Jerry Only and guitarist Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein must have required a lot of logistics for it to happen – which included Misfit’s European tour cancellation to make room for the reunion shows. According to a press release sent out, however, things may not have gone as smoothly as they seem.
A group of promoters in Europe, which includes Rockstadt Extreme Fest (represented by Asociatia Culturala REF – Romania), Loud Events (Bulgaria), Associazione arte & arte (Italy), A La Carga Producciones S.L. (Spain) and Cieszanow Rock Festival (Poland) represented by Centrum Kultury i Sportu w Cieszanowie), are claiming they haven’t been able to recover their deposit money after the tour was cancelled.
The frustrated promoters claim to have tried reaching out to Misfits’ booking agency, Artists Worldwide, to sort the situation and have been given the runaround about the whereabouts of the money. They have issued the following statement detailing the situation:
“The following text is written, published and approved by Rockstadt Extreme Fest(represented by Asociatia Culturala REF – Romania), Loud Events (Bulgaria),Associazione arte & arte (Italy), A La Carga Producciones S.L.
(Spain) and Cieszanow Rock Festival (Poland) represented by Centrum Kultury i Sportu w Cieszanowie).To the international media and public, we would like to bring to your attention a difficult and unpreceeded situation, in regards to the band MISFITS and their official booking agent, Chuck Bernal, representing Artists Worldwide (www.artists-worldwide.com), currently residing in the city of Los Angeles.
As some may be aware, THE MISFITS were supposed to perform a handful of shows in Europe, sheduled for August, taking place in Romania, Bulgaria, Italy, Poland, Ukraine and Spain. Some of these shows were booked from late 2015.
On the night of the 11th of May, the promoters received word that these European shows were cancelled due to a family emergency. Coincidence or not, the next day it was announced that the band will be reuniting in their classic line-up, alongside DANZIG for 2 shows sheduled in September on US soil. Howerever – for example – the romanian promoter of Rockstadt Extreme Fest found out about the cancellation online, due to this specific news, never receiving a mail from the agency.
Standard procedures in such cases of a cancellation due to the band imply that the agency will wire back the cash deposits received as advances for the performance. This was not the case, although Mr Bernal assured everybody that this will happen.
For over two months, every promoter tried to recuperate these deposits, significant amounts of cash wired as deposits for the shows. What we received individualy were delays over delays, promises that were not held, with absolutely no explanation to why the money is missing or when these deposits will be wired. Of course, we have documents proving all mentioned above. And they had all our bank account details, but kept asking as an excuse to delay the process.
Later did we found out that every promoter is in the exact same situation and received the exact same explanation. Or to say, no explanation. Thus, we started working together to reach a diplomatic solution, dozens of mails were sent, numerous calls were made on a daily basis.
We are not sure that the band is aware of this situation, as we have tried to contact whatever public source we found available, but with no success until now.
To this day, Mr. Bernal keeps delaying the process, even sending documents that he states are proof of the wirement, but upon careful legal inspection, these documents don’t stand as proof of any wirement. This is a false and illegal document. To be fair, such a document was sent only when sending numerous mails and calls, also explaining that if the situation will not get resolved, we will have no other choice than to go public.
Through this release, our intention is to spread the information about our situation and hopefully get this statement to someone in the band or the management to shed some light on what’s going on, that is if they know about the actions of Mr Bernal and his collegues at Artists Worldwide.
Also, we hope this will serve as a warning for future actions conducted by this misleading character known as Chuck Bernal.
We are asking anyone who supports our initiative to spread the information stated above in the hopes that someone from The Misfits will react to the current situation and shed some light. Also, we believe it is in everyone’s interest to spread the word about Artists Worldwide and their actions.
Firstly, we are fans of music, passion is what drives us everyday to work in the benefit of music and artists and we consider ourselved professional and diplomatic entities. But to be fair and completely honest, this situation has gone to far and we can no longer tolerate such actions.
If anyone from the media or the band would like to contact us, our contact info is listed below.
We thank you for your attention and interest.”
We reached out to Misfits’ booking agency for clarification and hadn’t heard back as of press time. We’ll update as more information becomes available.
