Last week, during their short stay in Manchester, UK, the members of Simple Plan posed for this new fantastic photoshoot by the photographer Kelly Hamilton.
Check out the photos in the gallery:
New Simple Plan photoshoot from Manchester
Author Archives: Dominika
Cartoonist reveals early sketches of “racoon SP t-shirt” design
SPB.net found out the name of the cartoonist who created the design for one of the most popular Simple Plan merch items on their new tour – which Pierre even wore on stage a couple times – the racoon t-shirt. You can purchase this t-shirt both at the merch stand at any Simple Plan show or online at MerchDirect.
The man behind the racoon design is Mathieu Beaulieu, an artist from Montreal, Canada, who recently started revealing some of the initial sketches of this design for Simple Plan both on his Instagram and his Dribble page – some of which were rejected. Check them out below:
Update: Mathieu Beaulieu confirmed that he is in fact currently working on another design for Simple Plan!
Ghost Town: “Simple Plan are really inspiring!”
One of the opening bands on the first leg of the European Simple Plan tour, Ghost Town, recently did an interview with Radio Cardiff, while stopping in Bristol last Sunday. In this interview Alix and Kevin from Ghost Town talked about what it’s like to tour with Simple Plan and how they see them as a band:
Kevin: “A lot of our peers and bands that we’ve toured with or that we look up to in our scene have been doing this for three times longer than us. They’ve been a band three times longer than us.”
Alix: “Yeah, they are the bands that we’ve looked up to… and then we’re going on tour with them. So it’s kind of unreal..”
Kevin: “It’s pretty insane.”
Alix: “Like Simple Plan!”
Kevin: “Yeah! And like Simple Plan for example.. They are crazy. They’ve been a band for 16 years and we’re barely scratching the surface of 3 years. And we have a hell of a long way to go. But it’s very inspiring to see their live show every night, to see their die-hard fans and just them as people. And half of them have amazing families, and it’s just really inspiring as a musician to see like – what a career could become, you know? You know, like, where it can land.“
The interviewer also mentioned the funny video Ghost Town did with Simple Plan 2 months before the tour started, where they promised to start a prank war. Alix and Kevin then explained most pranking was eventually done between the two opening acts – Ghost Town and The Bottom Line, but also mentioned the prank they did on Simple Plan when they jumped on their stage for the first time in France.
Alix: “You know, funny enough, when we went on this tour, we thought it was just gonna be us and Simple Plan. But now we have our buddies The Bottom Line, who are a part of the tour now and I’d say the prank war kinda transfered from Simple Plan to us and The Bottom Line. And they are a great bunch of dudes, we have a really awesome time.”
Kevin: “We did pull a good prank on Simple Plan in France.”
Alix: “Yeah, we were in Strassbourg.”
Kevin: “Yeah. And they sell these like speedos that say Simple Plan on them.. Anyway, we all put them on and towels, and then that’s all we had. Shirtless, we went on stage, during one part of their set and at the same time we all ripped our towels off and started dancing on stage. It was pretty pup-punk of us to do actually.”
You can listen to the full interview with Alix and Kevin from Ghost Town below:
REPORT: Simple Plan finish 1st leg of Euro tour in the UK
The final four shows of the first leg of Simple Plan’s European tour, which kicked off at the end of February, took place in the United Kingdom. In the past week, Simple Plan visited four British cities – Bristol, Nottingham, Manchester and London – where they played for thousands of enthusiastic fans.
Simple Plan kicked the British part of the tour on Sunday in Bristol, where they played for about 2500 people at the O2 Academy. At this show, the band performed their usual setlist, playing Your Love Is A Lie, I Refuse, Nostalgic and This Song Saved My Life for the interchangable songs [see the tour setlist for more info on the songs Simple Plan change up during their shows]. A couple of pictures from the show in Bristol can be seen here.
I rejoined the tour for the final three shows, so I managed to get you a lot more stuff from the last three days of the tour. The guys had a day off in Nottingham, where some of them decided to walk around the sights and just relax. The show took place in Rock City (no relation to R. City), one of the bigger venues of this tour with a capacity of 2450 people. Interestingly, a vast majority of the crowd that night were men, which isn’t a very common thing for Simple Plan shows. And as the Nottingham setting is crucial to the legends of Robin Hood, lots of jokes were made on that account throughout the whole day along with plenty of jokes regarding the British accent. Setlist once again changed a little bit from the Bristol one – the guys played Your Love Is A Lie, Kiss Me Like Nobody’s Watching (instead of I Refuse), Nostalgic and Astronaut (instead of TSSML). After the show, Pierre and David both came out to check out The Bottom Line’s (of the opening bands) traditional acoustic set for the fans.
Check out my photos from the soundcheck and the show in the gallery:
The next day, on Wednesday, Simple Plan headed to the quite close city of Manchester, where they were to play the O2 Ritz venue. Since the tour bus parked right in front of the venue, where the fans were lining up, all band members kept showing up here and there, at one point filming a video featuring Jeff and fans for local promo [see a picture from the filming here]. The guys were all in an exceptionally mood that day during soundcheck, which I considered one of the best ones (that I know of) of the tour. Simple Plan kicked off the show around 9pm and again did some changed to their setlist by playing Your Love Is A Lie, I Refuse, Farewell and TSSML. According to Jeff, this show was one of the top 3 shows of the tour at that point (beside Prague and Hamburg). Check out the photos below:
And finally on Thursday the guys got back to the capital city – London, where they were welcomed by quite traditional rainy weather at the O2 Forum Kentish Town venue. Pierre made an exception for the final day of the tour and while usually he tried not to attend soundchecks (to save his voice), after the guys ended their soundcheck set, he appeared on the stage, greeted with loud cheers from the fans in the audience. All the bands and also the very very loud crowd gave it the best they could for the final show of the tour and it is rightfully being called the best show of the UK part of the tour by both the band and the fans (meaning it was quite possibly one of the top 3 shows of the tour). Simple Plan kept their Manchester setlist for London, so no changes there. Simple Plan also didn’t forget to thank the crew and their opening bands for a wonderful tour that will surely be remembered by many. Both Pierre and Chuck also supported their opening band The Bottom Line by wearing either their merch or the merch of the upcoming charitable Teddy Rocks festival, co-organised by Tom from TBL, which raises funds to help fight children’s cancer. See the pictures of the show in London and soundcheck in the gallery:
Throughout the whole day, the guys took over Kerrang’s Instagram profile (plus their own Instagrams), which is also why we have quite the number of backstage shots from London available in the gallery – including Chuck’s and Pierre’s “pregnancy” announcement or a full bands & crew picture from the stage in London:
And finally, during the show in London, just like at the past couple of shows, the guys from the two opening bands and their crew all jumped up on stage during Simple Plan’s party medley, once again revealing they were wearing nothing but Simple Plan’s new underwear line. Here’s a video I took of this hilarious moment of the final night of the tour:
Simple Plan to release no rap version of ‘Singing In The Rain’ as single
For a few months now we’ve known that Simple Plan’s second single from their new record ‘Taking One For The Team’ (after ‘I Don’t Wanna Go To Bed’) will be the song ‘Singing In The Rain’. The band already also filmed a music video for the song recently, which should be coming out in a couple weeks. Before that however, the song will be distributed to the radios – but it seems it won’t be the version we’re used to from the record.
The CD version of ‘Singing In The Rain’ features the American rap duo R. City, however the recently released single version of the song on Spotify is the “no rap” version of this song – that means without the R. City featuring. The theory that this will be this version of the song in the upcoming music video and the version promoted in the radios is also supported by the time stamp that is featured on the single’s artwork [see it here], which states the song is 3:29 minutes long, while the CD version of the song (feat. R. City) is 3:43 minutes long.
Have a listen of the new “no rap” version of ‘Singing In The Rain’ below:
Which version do you like better? With or without R. City?