From past experience I can honestly say that no other weekend has been this crazy for the SP fans, as this one – and I dare say most importantly because of this Saturday, January 14th 2012, it will go down in Simple Plan’s history. This time though not because of some great thing the guys have achieved or some kick-ass show they just played. No, this time it was all in the hands of the fans themselves. Simple Plan fans managed something they have never before: to completely take over Twitter and its Trending Topics.

If you’re a social network newbie, or just try to stay away from Twitter as much as possible, here’s the deal: Trending Topics is sort of a system that Twitter uses to find out (and show to its users) the 10 topics, that people talk about the most in real time on this network – that means it shows the most popular topics on Twitter. And due to the fact that these 10 Trending Topics are shown to all the Twitter users, it is a very neat and interesting way of promotion.

And what exactly did the fans manage to “trend”? For some unknown reason, without any massive call to arms, “Pierre Bouvier”, started trending. And that started it all. When the fans managed to get the name “Chuck Comeau” up on the TT list as well, they were certain they must put the rest of the band up as well. So, shortly after that, you could spot “Seb Lefebvre”, then “David Desrosiers” and “Jeff Stinco” among the worldwide Trending Topics. But the fans were far from the end of this take-over. Even though he is not with SP as much as he used to, most fans still consider him to be the “6th member of Simple Plan” – and that’s why “Patrick Langlois” was the next thing to trend. The fans wrapped up this Saturday craziness with “Astronauts Love Simple Plan” and “Brazil Miss Simple Plan”, to show the whole world, who’s fans were on fire that day.

And how did the band react to these news? Because this was the first time ever (if we’re not counting some birthday hashtags from a year ago) that the members’ names got to be on the TT list, they were absolutely mind-blowned. This is how Pierre reacted (after being told by Chuck): “I’m a trending topic!! How awesome! Our fans rule!! Pierre Bouvier is the coolest!!! This might be one of the highlights of my life… HAHAH!”.

According to Chuck’s reaction when he appeared on TT, he was pretty surprised too: “You’re joking! Now i’m trending worldwide!! Wow! 1st time ever! SP fans are INSANE today! Thank you so much! You guys rock!”, soon adding: “I’m sitting in my hotel room in KL and I can’t believe how powerful the SP Family and the SP Astronauts can be. I’m blown away! Thank you! Must a LOT of people looking at the trending topics and asking themselves: who the hell is Chuck Comeau? LOL. Love it! Thank you, SPfamily”, and finally: “Well SP fans…you made Chuck Comeau very happy tonight. I love you guys!”

Sebastien expressed his ecstasy with a tweet saying: “Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooo YEAH!!!!!!” and then of course when Jeff found out, he sent this beautiful message to his fans: “Wow! I just saw that I’m trending worldwide….you guys are the most crazy, sick, amazing, incredible, wonderful, brilliant fans in the world! I don’t even know what to write you guys, I’m so touched. Everything I think of sounds showoff-y or plain stupid so i’ll stick to: thank you! I’m an Astronaut too. Let’s say it how it really is: Simple Plan just has the best fans in the world. You guys are the reason why we’ve been at it for so long.”

And we can’t forget about Patrick’s reaction, who definitely didn’t expect a thing: “Just woke up from a nap and I see that I was trending worldwide! That’s crazy!! I guess I should nap more often!”

I still have no idea what exactly happened yesterday and what caused all this awesomeness, but the fans have definitely proved how strong they can be, when they join their forces. They proved it today also, when “Simple Plan Saved My Life” has topped the worldwide Trending Topics for hours. And what will trend next? Make sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook and it case something goes on, you’ll be the first to know.

Sebastien and Jeff, both currently back home in Montreal, Canada, have recently went for a car drive through the city, which is apparently the new best spot to record videomessages. Even though Simple Plan promote “Don’t Drink And Drive”, seems like vlogging and driving is acceptable, so in this spirit the two guitarists taped a short special “Merry Christmas” video for their fans in Indonesia, where the guys are scheduled to play just in a couple of weeks.

Yesterday, Simple Plan’s guitarist Jeff Stinco, attended as a delegate of the Simple Plan Foundation an event called “Recognition Ceremony”, which was being organised by Portage.

The main goal of this nonprofit Canadian foundation is to support people dealing with drug abuse and to help them successfully return to the society. Since 1970 this organisation has already helped more than 34 000 people in Canada.

This Sunday, on October 16th 2011, a “Recognition Ceremony” took place in Montreal, where 230 people celebrated their successfully finished therapy in this institute.

The organisation is listed in this year’s Simple Plan Foundation’s donations, which is also one of the reason why Jeff was called to be one of the speakers of the day. This is what Jeff said about the event:

“I was invited to speak at the “Recognition Ceremony” of Portage and I met some amazing people here. Congratulation to all the graduates! I’m still very touched by the event.”

After 20 hours of uploading on YouTube, my interview with Chuck, Seb and Jeff (who joined us later in the interview because he was jealous of the guys being interviewed by SimplePlan.cz :)) is finally ready for your viewing pleasure! The interview was recorded (thanks a lot to Viola for the awesome camera work) in the afternoon before the concert. I really really hope you’ll like it. Also, I am currently working on the English transcript of the interview and will add it later.

Enjoy:

Today on August 22nd, the lead guitarist of Simple Plan – Jeff Stinco – turns 33 years old. On behalf of SimplePlan.cz I would like to wish him all the best, lots of luck, health, time spent with his family and also even more success with Simple Plan.

Happy birthday, Jeff!

Yesterday’s evening must have been one of the most important in Simple Plan’s career – the guys had the first opportunity to play the new songs from their upcoming album Get Your Heart On! in front of their Canadian audience and therefore capture the first reactions to the new tracks and find out if all the 2-years-long work was not just a complete waste of time.

It has been pretty obvious for the whole day that the night was going to be very emotional for the guys in the band. ” Not gonna lie, I’m a bit nervous for tonight: never played the new songs before… Last night, I couldn’t fall asleep: my mind couldn’t stop practicing the new songs,” admitted Jeff to his Twitter followers before the concert. “The most stressful thing is that we don’t want to disappoint each other.”

Thankfully the night went on great. According to Le Journal De Montreal, Simple Plan started off the sold out show in Le National in Montreal, Canada with You Suck At Love, and then continued with the following: Can’t Keep My Hands Off You, Astronaut, Loser Of The Year, Anywhere Else But Here, Last One Standing, Summer Paradise, This Song Saved My Life, Freaking Me Out and Jet Lag – for the last mentioned song, the guys were joined by Marie-Mai, who sings on the French version.

The fans were informed this was an exclusive show and were asked not to record it. All this in order to keep the songs a mystery till the new record’s official release date.

Journal Metro wrote that the guys really did play only 10 songs out of 11 (from Get Your Heart On!), which means Gone Too Soon has not been played live yet. Also, it is now clear that the only ballads on the album will be “This Song Saved My Life” and “Astronaut”.

According to Canoe.ca, the fans reacted amazingly to all the new songs, but Freaking Me Out was definitely perceived by the audience as the best song of the show.

The rest of the show was then devoted to songs from the previous three albums.

Apart from their own songs, Simple Plan also came up with a cover versions of Cee Lo’s “Fuck You”, Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite” and Pink’s “Raise Your Glass”, check it out:

You can check out the first photos from the concert and from backstage in the gallery and keep checking back for updates during the whole day.