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.
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Ever since their early beginnings, Simple Plan have always been a band that took the connection with their fans very seriously and made communication with them their top priority. Right now it’s mainly Instagram with the addition of Twitter and Facebook, before that it was most prominently MySpace and also YouTube and before social media even came to existence, Simple Plan fans’ go-to place for first-hand updates from Simple Plan was the official website, SimplePlan.com. Until the rise of MySpace (around 2006), SimplePlan.com served almost as a social network of its own. Patrick Langlois, the former webmaster (also photo and videographer and merch guy of Simple Plan) updated the website pretty much daily with short – almost Twitter-like messages, photos and short videos. The website nowadays doesn’t offer as much up-to-date content, as social media mostly took over its primary role – quick & first-hand promotion. But what did the website look like back in the early days and what tools did it use to promote the band?
Of course at this point, we won’t be able to visibly find news from 15 years ago on SimplePlan.com anymore, but fortunately nothing you delete off the internet is ever truly gone. So today we decided to go back in time and find some old posts on SimplePlan.com, which might show us some interesting inside looks into Simple Plan’s communication with fans on the Internet back in 2001 and 2002 and see how the band’s first album’s release was promoted through this media channel.
Going through the 2001 posts, the fun, sarcastic and mostly personal vibe that you can get from this era from the ‘A Big Package For You’ DVD can truly be felt from Patrick’s SimplePlan.com posts, where he didn’t hold anything back – despite it being the band’s official website. By giving the fans such personal insights into the band’s lives, Patrick manager to over time generate a much more personal connection between the band and its fans. On November 25th 2001, Patrick for example wrote a post fitting entitled ‘I hate Pierre and Chuck today!’, which documented the song-writing process for Simple Plan’s first record by using some interesting insights into both the band’s lives and also their sense of humour:
In between December 16th and 18th 2001, Simple Plan headed over to NYC to shoot the album cover (the cover was officially revealed just a month later – January 31st). Patrick once again kept the fans all up-to-date about the process every single day, making jokes along the way:
“Well, we got here this morning and all day the guys have been trying out lots of clothes for the shoot to make sure that they look good. Jeff has been combing his hair all day so that he can be at his best. Tomorrow, we are all getting up early and the guys will be photographed for hours, should be a blast!”
The announcement of all the details regarding the release of No Pads, including the album’s title appeared on the website on January 18th 2002. In the message, Patrick confirmed that the album was in fact finished the day before – January 17th 2002 at 4am:
The first single off No Pads No Helmets … Just Balls will be “I’m Just A Kid”. The song starts spinning at radio end of January, early February so the guys need you all to help them and call and request it a lot. It is worthy to note that it will be a new version of the song since it has been re-recorded for the album.”
It’s very impressive to see how well and actively the band used their website back in the early 2000s to make sure their music was being spread. Over the next two months, the website was being updated very regularly with special content and sneak peeks, teasing the fans about their new album. It even made ‘I’m Just A Kid’ available for a free download for 60 days with ‘Addicted’, ‘I’d Do Anything’ and ‘The Worst Day Ever’ following soon after. It is no wonder many of their initial fans already knew the lyrics to their songs even before the album was officially out. On the release day, Simple Plan even made their full album available for streaming on their website, for all fans to have their first exclusive listen.
For years, the members of Simple Plan have been very vocal about them being the pioneers of vlogging on the internet. And it could very well be true. Ever since 2001, Patrick had been posting short clips of the band – mostly funny behind the scenes stuff, some of which ended up on the ‘A Big Package For You’ DVD later on and that is fairly remarkable. You can look forward to some of them in one of our upcoming No Pads special articles!
Another thing that has remained the same from the old times is that even back in the day Simple Plan supported fans’ engagement. Very often Patrick asked the SP fans for their opinion and feedback on new music or whether the album was available in the fans’ area. Another way of engaging fans into the bands’ business were the announcements of special events they could take part in. For instance, in the spring of 2002 Pat published a plea for fans in the Toronto area to come to the videoshoot for ‘I’d Do Anything’. Below, you can check out Pat’s call for fans/extras in the shoot and also the band’s consequent ‘thank you’ to all the participants:
“Hey There!! We just want to take a minute to say a huge “thank you” to everyone who showed up to our video shoot on Saturday. You guys were absolutely amazing!! Your performance was awesome!! You guys made it look real and gave us the energy to keep going all day and all night. A special thanks to everyone who stayed til the end…thank you thank you thank you!!!! You have no idea how grateful we all are!! We can’t wait for all of you guys to see it on TV. See you soon.”
And as you can see from the quote above, it wasn’t just Patrick who kept the fans up-to-date on all things Simple Plan: the members of the band themselves were also involved quite a lot. 
Not only they had their e-mail addresses out in public, available to their fans to reach out to SP (and sometimes get a reply!), they even often posted short blog-like updates (similar in style of their later MySpace blogs) from tour. These once again helped bring the elementy of authenticity to the fan-band relationship. I managed to find one blog post from the years 2001 to 2002 written by each of them so you can now remind youselves of Pierre’s, Jeff’s, Chuck’s, Seb’s and David’s writing below:
“Hey what’s up everybody? Chuck here. I hope all of you had a blast this summer and are not too bummed to be back in school. It’s been a rad summer for us… We had the chance to play amazing shows like the Van’s Warped Tour, Edge Fest II, Sno-Jam and a few dates with American Hi-Fi. We got to see awesome bands like Blink-182, The Ataris, New Found Glory, Sum 41, Good Charlotte, Jimmy Eat World, Lagwagon, Pennywise, Homegrown, Reel Big Fish and our Montreal friends, Subb and Planet Smashers.
I think the best thing about playing all those shows was the overwhelming response we got from you guys. Seeing you jumping up and down, cheering and singing our songs made the shows so good. We met a lot of new friends and we are looking forward to hang out with all of you again soon. Thanks for everything. You rule. Take care.”
“Saturday, march 23rd…we drove in to Atlantic City at about 4am. We were all sleeping so we did’nt really get to see all the lights and stuff….but anyways. We parked in front of the Trump Taj Mahal, and slept till about 12 noon. We then proceded to do what we basically do everyday on this tour: set up all our stuff and sound check and try to find food…only this time we were right in the middle of a huge casino!!! I think it was one of the biggest in town…pretty impressive. The arena we were playing in was really big too…and it was sold out, so before we knew it, people started coming in. We started our set at 9pm and the arena was almost full…it was so cool to play for such big crowd. The show went great, except for my usual fumble with lyrics….oops! But really, I think it was one of our better shows, performance wise. And I think the crowd enjoyed it too…there were so many girls!! I guess that’s what you get for touring with studs like Sugar Ray!! Speaking of SR, they rocked as they always do. I watch their set every night…and everytime they blow me away.
So after the show we hung out with the crowd and made some new friends…the people here were awesome!! Afterwards, we went gambling with the guys from SR, had a few drinks and went to this club called the Casbah….I dont remember much after that…..no just kidding!!! The Casbah was cool…we hung out with SR and crew and a few fans from the show, and ended up going to bed around 5am…thank god today is a day off!! So anyways, that was our day in Atlantic city…we definetely had fun!”
“Hi everybody, what’s up? We’re back on tour with Sugar Ray and damn it feels great to be playing with the boys again! When we got to Decatur, Illinois, the weather was awesome and the whole Sugar Ray posse gave us the warmest welcome ever. We hung out with the guys a little, read our e-mails (we really read all of them, told you!) and finally played the show. After the show, the Sugar boys threw a party on their bus and it was really off the hook. I got a little tipsy but I stayed a very good boy! The next day, I woke up and we were already in Trenton New Jersey. We played a pretty good show that night and it was great to just chill with you guys, after the show. We met a lot of very cool people that night and we went to bed pretty late ’cause we really wanted to hang out with all our new friends.
In Richmond, Virginia we played an outdoor show that was really amazing. The weather wasn’t great but a least it didn’t rain when we played. It was awesome to see so much people wearing homemade Simple Plan t-shirts and singing the lyrics to our songs. David got a little reckless driving those little golf carts and broke too much stuff so we had to leave a little sooner then what we had planned. We’ll make sure to come back as soon as possible.
When we got to Westchester, PA, we watched Pat and Pierre get their ass kicked during a basketball game by the Sugar bus drivers Billy and Tommy. What a sad moment for the Simple Plan crew. That show was one of our best and it sounded amazing. After that, I hung out with Rodney (Sugar Ray’s guitar player) and we listened to lots of cool music. The Sugar Ray guys were going back home for a few days so after a few hours of weeping we left the guys behind and drove to Philly and that’s where we’re at right now. We have a few days off but and I’m already itchy to play again. Hope to see you at the next show. Take care.”
“Hey you guys!!! Wussup!
I’m in a hotel room right now and I just thought I could share some of my tour story with y’all. Well first of all I’d like to say that it’s still kinda surreal to be on tour with Sugar Ray and I think it’s a huge honor, so…that being said, I’m gonna be really sad to leave this tour, cause it’s been a blast and we got to meet amazing people just like yourself, so thank you for being so nice to us!!!
On top of all that, I even got to play drums on “Every Morning” one night! It may sound like nothing to you but it was like a dream come true to me, and I miss playing drums, so it was the best oportunity to get back at it!!! And on some of the nights, Mark brings me on stage to sing a part in “Someday”, so as you can see, I’m having a blast, but I can’t wait to go to Europe, and even more to start the Pop Disaster tour with my all time heroes: Green Day and Blink 182 and I’m excited to see Saves the Day, I saw them not to long ago with Weezer and I really enjoyed it!!!
So until the next show, take care and I’ll meet you there!!!
Love,”
“Hey everybody! We are now june 13th and today is a day off from the pop disaster tour. We had a show yesterday with our friends blink 182 and green day. Before that, we had a couple of days off from the tour so we did a show in montreal for my birthday!!! that show was completely crazy and all the kids came on stage. We will put a video about that very soon so come back. Two days after that, there was show in toronto for pop disaster and it was as crazy if not more. thanks to all the kids that came out, we had a blast. then we did the video shoot, we will never thank you enough for that. and we were off to the show in buffalo, NY where we played with 4 bands including rufio and strung out. Let me tell you david was jumping everywhere cuz strung out is one of his favorite bands. I was pretty stoked too because we got a chance to hang out with them and realised what great guys they were. We are so busy these days it’s great!!!
Sorry if we didn’t get a chance to reply to a lot of e-mails, Keep on writing! We love reading them. Today is a day off and we are going to the the end of the tour party tonight. I’ll tell you all about it later.
Take care and see you at the show”
It’s truly remarkable how well exectuted Simple Plan’s online marketing was in their beginnings, which are tied to the beginnings of the massive spread of Internet use in general. Whether it was through active communication with their fans, constant and quick updates, lots of interesting content including videos and photographs, the band had it all firmly under their thumb. In today’s society, social media took over the main purpose of the official website, yet we can still see now on Instagram on Twitter, that the band has not lost their original online tendencies. E-mails were replaced by tweets, photographs by Instagram updates, but their basic strategy – to be one of the most accessible bands out there – has not changed.
