Author Archives: Dominika

No Pads special #3: How did the album title come about?

AUTHOR: Dominika | 20. July 2017 | 2 comments

In 2017, Simple Plan are celebrating 15 years since the release of their debut album No Pads, No Helmets… Just Balls with a special 15th anniversary NPNHJB worldwide tour [check out all the dates in our Tour section!].

To get you even more excited about the return of the No Pads tour (starting again in August), SimplePlan.cz prepared an exclusive series of “No Pads special” articles, giving you little possibly never-seen-or-heard-before interesting flashbacks to the No Pads era.

[No Pads special #1] | [No Pads special #2]

The third installment of the SimplePlan.cz No Pads special leads us to the album itself – particularly to its title: “No Pads, No Helmets… Just Balls”. The title started the trend of practically every follow-up Simple Plan album having a double entendre (all besides the self-titled one). But how did the guys even come up with this classic title? Since social media wasn’t really big back in the beginning of the 00s, there isn’t that many interviews available online that we could rely on when it comes to digging up old information. But we still did manage to find a couple of them, in which the band discussed the meaning behind this funny title.

In the first interview for Kidzworld, Sebastien and Chuck were directly asked about the title, and having never taken themselves too seriously – their answer was precisely that: they just needed a name and this one was goofy enough to represent their “love for balls”. As simple as that:

Chuck: “The name for the CD… you know what, we don’t remember… we were just messing around and we needed a name.”

Seb: “Well… we just like balls! Basketballs, you know we just like to play with them – any kind of balls.”

Chuck: “Footballs, meatballs… we might as well be honest and just say it.”

– Interview for Kidzworld (2002) [link] –

While the previous answers didn’t really give us any actual meaning behind the title, one side-meaning of it was revealed by Jeff in the 2003 interview for Idobi radio:

Pierre: “We pulled it out of our asses. I don’t know how that happened. It’s just.. We wanted something that would be funny and sort of memorable. And I think we’ve achieved that in a certain way.”

Jeff: “I mean, we found a second meaning to it too afterwards! You know, it takes a lot of balls for five Canadian boys from Montreal to get out there and wanna conquer the world..”

Pierre: “It takes ten.”

Jeff: *laughs* “It takes ten balls.”

Chuck: “Five pairs.”

– Interview for Idobi radio (2003) [link] –

I think we could agree that since the title was mostly created as a fun play on words to best introduce the new band as a fun-loving, not-taking-themselves-too-seriously band, the best part about this title is that it’s up for interpretation and any fan can find a different meaning behind it. What would YOUR interpretation of the title be? Let us know in the comments below!

The Bottom Line to join Simple Plan on tour in the U.S. and Canada!

AUTHOR: Dominika | 19. July 2017 | 1 comment

Even if you haven’t been to any of the European shows in the past year and half, if you’ve been following the news about Simple Plan, I’m pretty sure you’ve already heard of The Bottom Line. The four-piece British band from around London first opened for Simple Plan last year in Europe and after the first European TOFTT leg, they were the only opening band to be asked to join SP on the second leg as well, as the band members have developed close friendships and figured they just work very well on tour together [read SP.cz’s interview with TBL’s lead singer here]. It didn’t take long and on the next European tour, which took place this summer, Simple Plan once again had The Bottom Line open for them on selected dates and their lead singer Callum Amies even got the job as Simple Plan’s guitar technician for the course of the whole European tour.

So at this point, it wouldn’t really be a Simple Plan tour without The Bottom Line. And I assume that’s exactly what Simple Plan thought as well, cause to help their friends out and to expose them to new – North American – audiences, they decided to give them another go and have them open for them once again – this time on the NPNHJB tour in the U.S. and also Canada!

Due to their show in Prague, where they are opening for The Offspring, The Bottom Line will not be present at the first 5 shows of the U.S. tour and will officially join the Simple Plan tour in Houston, TX. In the U.S., The Bottom Line will be joining two other opening acts for Simple Plan: Set It Off and Patent Pending. In Canada, they will be another opening act alongside Courage My Love and Selfish Things.

Check out all the upcoming tourdates for the NPNHJB tour in our Tour section!

Set It Off: “We got Simple Plan obsessed with escape rooms!”

AUTHOR: Dominika | 18. July 2017 | no comments

If there’s another two-word phrase besides ‘No Pads’ that has been used as many, if not more times than that one on Simple Plan members’ Instagram profiles in the past few months, then it’s definitely ‘escape rooms’.

While on the Taking One For The Team tour, Simple Plan usually spent their days off playing laser tag in different cities all across the world, on the No Pads tour, the band decided to ditch laser tag for the already mentioned escape rooms, which are much more intellectually challenging. But how did this obsession even start? Set If Off’s lead singer Cody Carson may have the answer.

Cody recently did an interview with Lizzie’s Lowdown and in it he discussed his band’s recent tour with Simple Plan in the U.S. and how he got SP hooked on escaping:

Interviewer: What was it like touring with Simple Plan. What are they like?

Cody: Oh they are really nice. When we are home we like to play this game called Munchkin. It is this real strategy-based board game. We will do stuff like that instead of going out to a bar. We found out that they are not different to that. We had a day off and we found this place where you can drink and play games. It had arcade games, laser tag and bowling and that is what we did. We drank beer and played 14 games of laser tag. I’ve got them obsessed with escape rooms, so on the next leg we are going to do a bunch of escape rooms.

– Cody Carson –

(lead singer of Set It Off)

Set It Off will be joining Simple Plan on their upcoming second leg of the No Pads, No Helmets… Just Balls tour in the United States. Check out all the tourdates here.

Simple Plan posed for a polaroid photoshoot in London

AUTHOR: Dominika | 18. July 2017 | no comments

Before Simple Plan hit the stage at the O2 Forum Kentish Town in London, UK last month (June 9th), they took part in a little special photoshoot session with photographer Ant Adams. Why special? Because all photographs were taken by a polaroid camera.

Check them out now in the gallery: