SimplePlan.cz is a continuation of a previously rather successful Czech/English blog about SP – sblog.cz/Domulka, founded by Dominika Marsová on November 18th 2005. Since then, the blog had become the only regularly updated site about Simple Plan in the Czech Republic. It had been growing (within its content, hits and also design), but it was clear for Dominika that her visitors wanted something more.
That’s why she started working on launching her own actual website on its own domain in June 2007. On August 2nd she bought the domain SIMPLEPLAN.CZ. This website was oficially opened on August 13th 2007.
In September 2007 the site experienced a number of technical issues, including the deletion of its external photo gallery. A new gallery has then been set up and later moved directly to SimplePlan.cz. The gallery has since become the most complete Simple Plan gallery of its kind on the Internet [with over 30 000 photos].
Ever since the beginning, the main goal of SimplePlan.cz has been to inform Simple Plan fans (and the rest of the public) about the band’s activities and to always stay up-to-date. Since its inception in 2007, SimplePlan.cz has never been on a hiatus, which has made it the longest contnuously running Simple Plan fansite on the Internet. This has been achieved mostly thanks to the amazing on-going support of its most devoted visitors, who’ve been helping Dominika out by constantly submitting news, photos and info from all over the world, as well as helping with the translations of various interviews and articles.
In the year of its launch (2007), SimplePlan.cz also organized the very first SP fans’ meet-up in the Czech Republic. This tradition has since continued over the years and every year the website organizes these events for local fans to gather, form new friendships and discuss their favorite band. The meet-ups take place alternately in Prague and Brno.
With the release of the new Simple Plan album in 2008, this site has received lots of new opportunities: an invitation for the T-Music Simple Plan special on Ocko TV (2 times), contest for Simple Plan items sponsored by Warner Music and most importantly an opportunity of an exclusive interview with the members of Simple Plan for this website. The interview took place on the first Simple Plan show in Prague, Czech Republic (April 27th 2008), where SimplePlan.cz also handed over a fan-book made by Czech fans to Chuck and also organized the first Czech crowd surpise for the band – the Thank You signs during the show.
In the beginning of 2010, SimplePlan.cz switched its former content management system from Cutenews to WordPress [hence the loss of all news between the years 2007 and 2009] and in July 2010 the site was fully transformed into a WordPress theme.
A big turn came in 2010, when the band itself started publicly recognizing SimplePlan.cz as one of the best fansites that the band has. Pierre said “it’s his Google”, according to Chuck it’s an “awesome website”, Jeff stated “it’s the place where he finds all the info about Simple Plan”, according to David’s it’s “the best Simple Plan fansite” and Sebastien mentioned that SimplePlan.cz “knows more about SP then the band itself does”.
In the summer of 2011, SimplePlan.cz had the opportunity to send the band a few questions from which they chose one to answer in a special video message for SimplePlan.cz:
In 2011 the website had the chance to do a few more contests for the fans (thanks to a partnership with Supraphon/Warner Music and Punx Not Dead): most importantly offering 2 spots in a meet&greet with the band in Prague.
In September 2011 during their European tour, Simple Plan returned to the Czech Republic, where SimplePlan.cz interviewed them again – this time Chuck and Sebastien. Chuck was looking forward to this interview a lot and added that “simpleplan.cz rocks!“. During the interview (that lasted 25 minutes), Jeff joined us at the table because (as he said) he was “jealous” of the guys for doing an interview with SimplePlan.cz – “I love you guys!”
Also, during an interview for another local media, David and Jeff mentioned that SimplePlan.cz is the best website about Simple Plan in the world. Check it out on the video below:
For the second Simple Plan concert in the Czech Republic, the website organised a few more surprises for the band. Firstly, a gift: a suitcase called “A Big Package For You: Czech (travel) edition”, which included a so-called “Czech book” (a summary of fans’ experience from the first show and reasons why SP’s songs saved their lives) and a map of Czech SP fans. The gift was handed over to Jeff, who said it was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen.
Another surprise that SimplePlan.cz prepared that day (September 2nd 2011) for the band was another crowd action – each fan was assigned to bring a paper heart with a “thank you” written on it and pull the sign up when the last song of the night (Perfect) started. The fact that most of the fans pulled the signs up way before [after the band’s return to stage for the encore] didn’t matter at all – the band noticed, was completely caught off guard, not expecting something like this from SO MANY fans and stopped the show for a while to take a picture with this beautiful scenery of Thank You signs on stage:
As a way to say thanks SimplePlan.cz during the show in Prague, Pierre mentioned the website and after seeing its creator in the crowd started an applause for SimplePlan.cz and the whole venue joined him. You can check out this moment below (from mark 1:35):
In September 2011 in Frankfurt, Germany, Sim (SP’s merch guy) said the guys from SP were all over SimplePlan.cz, that they love it very much and visit it all the time. He also mentioned he was impressed and that he didn’t understand where the website gets all the info that hasn’t even been posted on the official website yet.
In October 2011, SimplePlan.cz managed to interview the band Imodium, which opened for Simple Plan in Prague, Czech Republic, about their thoughts on SP and opening for them.
In March 2012, SimplePlan.cz met up with Simple Plan again and filmed these two shout-outs for the website with Pierre and David before their show in Vienna, Austria. The shout-outs also included a mention of the “Prague City Festival” in the Czech Republic, where the band was supposed to play in June 2012 (and where SP.cz was supposed to interview the band members again), but which was later canceled as a whole.
In April 2012, SimplePlan.cz interviewed the director of Simple Plan’s music videos for “Save You” and “Summer Paradise” (and also Sebastien’s “Fall For You”) – Randall “RT!” Thorne about the just released music video for “Summer Paradise”.
In November 2012, Simple Plan released their long-awaited biography book – “Simple Plan: The Official Story”, and the band mentioned SimplePlan.cz again at a Q&A session before a book signing in Montreal, Canada, as one of their favorite fansites.
A few months earlier, SimplePlan.cz was asked to send the band pictures of the fans’ tattoos that it’s been collecting for over a year at that point for a special section on the webiste. Some of the tattoos then ended up in the book with a little credit to SimplePlan.cz in the final “photo credits”.
After months of it being in works, SimplePlan.cz finally conducted a Skype interview with Chuck Comeau on January 31st/February 1st 2013 to make up for the canceled show/interview at Prague City Festival. The full interview (also with video, although in quite a bad quality) can be seen here:
In February 2013, SimplePlan.cz made another interview – this time with Fred Jerome, Simple Plan’s graphic designer, about his work for Simple Plan.
In November 2013, SimplePlan.cz has been contacted by Simple Plan’s management – Coalition Entertainment – thanks to whom the site got the opportunity for the world premiere of a preview of the song “Ordinary Life” that was later featured on the band’s EP “Get Your Heart On – The Second Coming!”
At the end of November and the beginning of December 2013, Simple Plan attended Warped Tour in Australia. An interview with Chuck Comeau was featured in the program of this festival and when asked about the “craziest or the most amazing thing a fan has ever done for them”, Chuck mentioned SimplePlan.cz in his answer:
In March 2015, SimplePlan.cz got to collaborate with the production of a Canadian TV program called Accès Illimité and released a series of exclusive previews from a then-upcoming Simple Plan special [1st preview].
Two months later, in May 2015, a shortened version of an interview with Dominika about SimplePlan.cz was posted on the journalist portal of the Masaryk University.
The next SimplePlan.cz interview with the members of Simple Plan took place in August 2015, when the band returned to Europe and Dominika had the chance to film with the guys in the backstage of their show in Antwerp, Belgium. This time around the interview was conducted with Pierre, Seb and Chuck:
The September issue (2015) of the Czech music magazine called ROCK & POP had an article about Simple Plan, which also featured a little mention of SimplePlan.cz.
In October 2015, SimplePlan.cz did an interview with yet another interview with a music video director – this time around with Mark Staubach, the director of most of the recent Simple Plan music videos.
After the announcement of the spring European tour, SimplePlan.cz started collaborating with Charm Music, the promoters of the third show in Prague. Because of this collaboration, SimplePlan.cz held two contests in February 2016 – in which Czech fans had the chance to win CDs and even the opportunity to attend the soundcheck in Prague and meet the members of Simple Plan.
Before the show in Prague, on March 5th 2016, SimplePlan.cz filmed the fifth interview with the members of Simple Plan – this time with Sebastien and Chuck backstage at the Malá Sportovní Hala venue. You can watch the full interview here:
During the show in Prague, SimplePlan.cz once again organized a crowd surprise for the band with a project called Czech Out The Rest Of Us. The goal of this project was for the fans to create their own signs, which included one attribute from the song ‘The Rest Of Us’, which they related to the most, with an arrow pointing down at them. This turned out to be a great success as hundreds of fans joined in and put their signs up during ‘The Rest Of Us’.
This created a lovely moment, which made all the band members very emotional. Pierre recognized the signs on stage by saying: “There are no words to describe how amazing you are. A beautiful surprise – thank you!”. Jeff also commented on it later, saying: “I was like a little girl – it completely brought tears in my eyes!”. In the following days, various Czech media reported on this surprise in their reviews of the show including those at MonsterMusic, Novinky.cz, MusicServer and Informuji.cz.
Check out a video taken from the balcony of the venue:
Another very memorable moment of the concert came with Pierre’s speech before This Song Saved My Life, when he personally thanked SimplePlan.cz for its help in the most gorgeous way possible. Pierre said:
Jeff also expressed his gratitude a day later via an Instagram post, in which he stated:
Later on that March, SimplePlan.cz had the chance to hold the first ever international contest on this website, thanks to the collaboration with Simple Plan’s management Coalition Music. The prize – the full ‘Hall Of Fame’ pre-order package – was eventually won by a participant from Spain.
In the April 2016 issue of the Czech music magazine called ROCK&POP, Jeff discussed the importance of SimplePlan.cz to the band’s success in the Czech Republic and in the world in general. You can read the excerpt from this article below:
“These days, it’s media like the Internet and perhaps also TV, radio and print, that help the band out. But in the Czech Republic, there is another factor. Fans and their hard work. Many years ago, our big Czech fan Dominika Marsová started a website simpleplan.cz, and because she did it well and dutifully, the website and therefore even the band has gotten a lot more attention. And in the end of the process we have a sold-out Mala Sportovni Hala venue. It’s sort of a phenomenon. And it’s really great that something like that works. The whole music scene can’t be doing that bad if one fan with simple means can cause such an avalanche. Dominika started her website in 2008 [SimplePlan.cz sidenote: actually, in 2007]. That was a good time for classic internet websites. Today, most people’s attention is distributed to platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Youtube or Instagram. But nothing has changed in the core of it. The bands are still about gaining fans with quality shows and quality music. And I’m really happy about that. These days, most people find out about new bands and new music via YouTube, iTunes or festivals. But there is still this option, where somebody plays you or recommends you a new band or a new song. And that’s great.”
Before the start of the second part of the European tour of 2016, in April/May, SimplePlan.cz interviewed Callum Amies from the opening band The Bottom Line.
In the summer of 2016, SimplePlan.cz kicked off its pin project with the production of its own SimplePlan.cz pins. These pins are limited edition are are awarded to people who have previously helped the website in some way, can be won in contests and also are handed out at SP fans’ meet-ups and given out to SP.cz fans at concerts, when they ask for them. Over the following months, the SimplePlan.cz also introduced special “scavenger hunts”, where a picture of a hidden pin somewhere public is posted online and fans have the opportunity to find it. Whoever finds it first can keep it (the website urges finders to send in a picture once they find it). So far, the scavenger hunts have take place in Prague, Brno, Berlin, London, Amsterdam and Cologne.
To celebrate 10 years of the Man Of The Hour radio show, SimplePlan.cz interviewed Seb Lefebvre about his 10-year radio project in August 2016.
When Simple Plan released their fourth album on vinyl, SimplePlan.cz immediately got their hands on it thanks to a cooperation with Warner Music Czech Republic and set up an international contest for one piece of the vinyl in September 2016. It eventually went to a fan in Australia.
In December 2016, Frank Joly, Simple Plan’s sound engineer decided to intervene into the SimplePlan.cz content and sent in his own hilarious bios of some of the members of Simple Plan’s tour crew. Frank’s notes (please take caution when reading – not all of them promise to be 100 % true) can be found in those bios that feature an asterisk (*) in our Crew section.
In between February and April 2017, Jeff Stinco mentioned SimplePlan.cz in 3 different interviews ahead of their tour in Europe. First, he has given credit to SimplePlan.cz for the band’s success as the “biggest rock band in the Czech Republic” on Bonjour TV and he also mentioned the website again in the interviews for Novinky.cz and the Evropa 2 radio station.
The band returned to Europe in May 2017 and SimplePlan.cz caught up with Simple Plan in Berlin and finally handed them their own SimplePlan.cz pins. The band said they have wanted to have them for months and Chuck immediately put his on [see a picture here]. SimplePlan.cz then asked Pierre there to film a special little shout-out to the Aerodrome Festival attendees – a festival, where Simple Plan were to perform two weeks later:
In June 2017, Dominika interviewed Seb and Chuck from Simple Plan at the 4th Simple Plan show in the Czech Republic, which took place at the Aerodrome Festival in Prague (there, Dominika also taught Pierre a couple of Czech words he then used during the concert – a picture of Pierre with his cheetsheet can be found here):
The same month, an interview with Dominika from SimplePlan.cz was featured in Black Velvet Magazine.
In July 2017, SimplePlan.cz was the first website to reveal information about the then-upcoming release of the vinyl for Simple Plan’s debut album ‘No Pads, No Helmets… Just Balls’. It also featured a picture of its packaging, which revealed the red color of the vinyl.
Over the years, SimplePlan.cz has been through many re-designs, all of which have been captured here. The site is also available on various social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Instagram.