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.

As you already know from the last post, on January 9th, the Canadian TV station RDI will be airing a documentary called “Je Suis Fan”, in which its director Yanie Dupont-Hébert explores the importance of the relationship between artists and their fans and how these relationships have evolved from the 50s till today. The documentary talks about the fans of Simple Plan, Roch Voisine and Paul Anka from all across the world and of all ages. Group PVP that produces this whole documentary has released the official trailer for it today and you can now check it out below:

Update:

Apparently, Simple Plan’s own Patrick Langlois, old friend, ex-videographer and web-admin, will also be featured in the Je Suis Fan documentary!

Simple Plan’s friendship with a fellow Canadian Avril Lavigne is definitely a proof that friendships can last for many many years. Back in 2003 Avril took them to her “Try To Shut Me Up Tour”, where mostly David and her turned into really big friends (you may remember the scenes from A Big Packag For You DVD, where Avril carries David to the stage because he hurt his leg after some too risky skateboarding, or the scenes from Avril’s DVD, where they ended up together in a closet etc.). And mostly because of all these little things, many rumours started in the past about a possible “more-than-friends” status between these two. Nothing has ever been confirmed.

After eight years we finally have a new picture of David and Avril together because David attended Avril’s show in Montreal last night. The show was the last of her Canadian tour with The New Cities. And of course it wouldn’t be David if he didn’t take this opportunity to play with The New Cities on drums during the song Looks Minus Substance. It’s pretty funny that in one of the reviews from last night, the author had mistaken David for “Simple Plan’s drummer” and wrote that it was in fact Chuck, who played drums with The New Cities. :)

And it was not only David who spent some time with Avril yesterday – she also made some time for Patrick, who has been working in MusiquePlus for the past three years as a video journalist. Apparantly Avril even demanded that it was him, who would be interviewing her. The two also have many common memories from the 2003 tour, back from when Patrick used to work for Simple Plan.

It looks like September 19th will be like Christmas for all Simple Plan fans: we already know that we’ll finally get the tourdates for both: the Canadian and the US tour and now, as a cherry on top of all that: we’ll finally get the world premiere of the “Astronaut” music video!

To make us even more excited, the guys decided to release a set of 14 pictures from behind the scenes of Astronaut. If you remember, in the interview for SimplePlan.cz the guys confimed there will be a subtle reference to Patrick Langlois in this music video… can you already spot it on the photos? :)

With the premiere of Astronaut being just around the corner, let’s sum up everything we already know about this music video:

“Astronaut” is the second single and at the same time the third music video from Simple Plan’s new album “Get Your Heart On!”. The director is Mark Staubach, who also directed the first GYHO! videoclip: “Can’t Keep My Hands Off You”. The shoot took place in a desert in the US and the actress/model Caitlin O’Connor was hired to portray one of the astronauts. According to Chuck this music video has probably the longest (around 45 seconds long) intro that Simple Plan has ever had in a music video and therefore the band considers it to be more like a mini-movie.

We’ll see how it all worked out this coming Monday, on September 19th.

Take today’s flight with Jet Lag Airlines and you’ll be heading to New York, where there is a video from the making of Jet Lag waiting for you. This video was made and edited by no-one other than Patrick Langlois and apart from the scenes with the band, it also includes the making of Natasha Bedingfield’s and Marie-Mai’s scenes. Check it out:

Patrick Langlois, a long-time friend of the guys from Simple Plan, now a videojournalist for MusiquePlus and also a new father to his first baby (congratulations!), has recently attended the shooting of the new Simple Plan’s music video for the first single: Jet Lag. Patrick documented the band’s trip to Toronto and interviewed some of the members. You can now check out the whole video (in French) on the MusiquePlus website: