Author Archives: Dominika

New on-stage photoshoot of Simple Plan from Europe

AUTHOR: Dominika | 18. July 2017 | no comments

Spoiler alert: One of the highlights of the 15th anniversary No Pads, No Helmets… Just Balls tour is undoubtedly the moment in Grow Up, when in the middle of the song, Pierre and Chuck switch their places: Pierre takes over the drums and Chuck jumps into the crowd.

In one of the latest photoshoots that were released from the recent European No Pads tour, Simple Plan kept their positions from this highlight and immortalised his moment on camera in a pretty funny way. Check it out in the full size in our gallery:

Simple Plan will also be bringing this tour to Canada, USA and Japan soon. Check out all the upcoming NPNHJB 15th anniversary tour dates here.

No Pads special #2: What was on the original No Pads tour setlist (2002)?

AUTHOR: Dominika | 17. July 2017 | 3 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: playing all songs from their first album from top to bottom (and a couple other favorites!). After hitting the U.S. and Europe, in the second half of 2017, Simple Plan will return to the USA and also visit Canada, Japan and more with this special once-in-a-lifetime 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.

In the second edition [read #1 here] of the “No Pads special” brings us back to March 18th 2002 – also known as the day before the release of Simple Plan’s first album: No Pads, No Helmets… Just Balls. That day, Simple Plan played a show in Buckhannon, WV, in the United States and this concert has become very special as it is currently the first Simple Plan show, who’s setlist has been documented online [on setlist.fm].

By comparing it to some further Simple Plan shows in 2002, it seems like the band has kept the set pretty much the same for their first tours. It consisted of 16 songs in total (out of which 3 were a part of the encore) and 3 covers (one of them was a medley of 3 Blink-182 songs, so technically it was 5 covers).

What’s interesting is to see that it seems that SP surprisingly did not end their show with Perfect back then, but instead they finished their it with a very peculiar choice – Vacation. Check out the full setlist of the Simple Plan show on March 18th 2002 below:

1. You Don’t Mean Anything
2. The Worst Day Ever
3. Grow Up
4. American Jesus (cover – originally by Bad Religion)
5. I’m Just A Kid
6. Addicted
7. One Day
8. I’d Do Anything
9. God Must Hate Me
10. All The Small Things / First Date / Dammit (cover medley – originally by Blink-182)
11. My Alien
12. I Won’t Be There
13. When I’m With You

Encore:
14. Perfect
15. Happy Together (cover – originally by The Turtles)
16. Vacation

Jeff performs more classical pieces for his online audience

AUTHOR: Dominika | 17. July 2017 | no comments

Lately, Jeff has very frequently been posting videos of his guitar practice sessions on his Instagram, which showcase Simple Plan’s lead guitarist’s a little bit different side. These videos feature Jeff performing some classical music pieces, often by South American composers.

On the first video, Jeff was joined by his eldest daughter Maya (10), who supervised his rendition of “Água E Vinho” by Brazilian composer Egberto Gismonti:

The second video, posted yesterday, was filmed by the lake where Jeff has been renovating a cabin of his for the past few months. In it, Jeff practices “Julia Florida” by Paraguayan composer, A. Barrios:

The headless Guitar Player practicing – "Julia Florida" by Paraguayan composer, A. Barrios

Příspěvek sdílený Jeff Stinco (@jeffstinco),

No Pads special #1: How David made Mark Hoppus destroy a vintage TV set

AUTHOR: Dominika | 15. July 2017 | 5 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: playing all songs from their first album from top to bottom (and a couple other favorites!). After hitting the U.S. and Europe, in the second half of 2017, Simple Plan will return to the USA and also visit Canada, Japan and more with this special once-in-a-lifetime 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.

We’re kicking off the #1 No Pads special with this very rarely discussed No Pads era story was initially published in an interview for Idobi Radio back in October 2002. In June of that year, Simple Plan filmed their second music video ever – the now-classic ‘I’d Do Anything’, which features Mark Hoppus from Blink 182, who also laid his vocals on a part of this song. One of the reasons why Hoppus was available for filming was because the videoshoot took place in Cleveland, right in the midst of the Simple Plan, Green Day and Blink 182 ‘Pop Disaster tour’, so it was fairly easy to get him and the members of Simple Plan in one place at one time.

If you recall the scene in ‘I’d Do Anything’ that Mark Hoppus is in, the Blink 182 singer is sitting on a rugged couch in a junkyard filled with various old appliances. The prop coordinator decorated the set with a bunch of those to make the junkyard look genuine. However, before placing a particular antique television set, he apparently specifically urged Simple Plan not to touch it, probably assuming they are young and therefore reckless. And oh boy was he right!

David was aware that Mark did not hear the prop coordinator’s plea in between takes and jokingly dared him to break the TV. And you can probably imagine what happened next:

“He got up and took a big brick and totally smashed the TV. We filmed the prop guy’s reaction. His face totally fell.”

– David Desrosiers –

“He turned white. ‘That TV’s been in my family for decades.’ It was this super old vintage thing worth like $6,000, and we were like, ‘Uh-oh.’”

– Chuck Comeau –

Remind yourselves of the music video for ‘I’d Do Anything’ below:

Simple Plan: the most followed Canadian band on Twitter

AUTHOR: Dominika | 15. July 2017 | 1 comment

During his Thursday’s visit to Montreal, Twitter Canada’s managing director Rory Capern revealed some interesting insights into the social network’s statistics in Canada – and Montreal in particular [revealed by Montreal Gazette yesterday].

Most of the insights were sports or politics related, as those are apparently the most popular topics in tweets regarding Montreal.

However, Capern also shared some interesting information regarding Canadian music scene on Twitter. When it comes to music, Simple Plan are continuously Canada’s most followed band on Twitter, at this moment reaching over 1.17 million followers on this social media site. Behind them on second place is Arcade Fire with 1 million followers.

Just to compare with other popular Canadian bands – Nickelback only reaches up to 764k followers, Hedley has about 608k followers and Sum 41 has even less – only 397k followers.

Of course, only bands, not solo music artists are considered in this statistic. Several Canadian artists such as Justin Bieber or Drake can of course pride themselves on a little higher amount of followers.