REPORT: Simple Plan at Rock For People

Tens of thousands of music fans have gathered last week in the airport area of Hradec Králové in the central part of the Czech Republic to attend the annual Rock For People festival, which traditionally offers four days full of tons of multi-genre performances. This festival was the reason for Simple Plan to return to the Czech Republic yet again not even one year since their last appearance.

A big question mark was however hovering over how Simple Plan would deal with being put on the first festival day, which besides SP included a line-up of rather hardcore and metal acts such as I Prevail, The Architects or Slipknot. Our worries have completely disappeared once we’ve seen the wave of people heading over to the YouTube Music Stage right before the Simple Plan show. On one hand, it might have been rather surprising for some to see more than three quarters of the audience raise their hands when Pierre asked who is seeing Simple Plan for the very first time. The reasoning is simple: it’s very likely that the imbalance of the music genres on the first day of the festival has caused many Simple Plan fans not to attend – because it simply didn’t offer anybody else for them to see. On the other hand it was the perfect opportunity to introduce Simple Plan’s live show to other music fans, who have so far only known this band from the radio. From our point of view, we have to say that the atmosphere that the fans and “not fans” managed to create during this show was marvellous and overall very pleasant. You could tell that for many of the attendees, Simple Plan songs are tied to their teenage years and you just can’t forget those lyrics! No wonder that Pierre actually confided in us later that day that this was one of the best times he’s had on stage in years. And that’s always so nice to hear!

Overall, we could sum up that Simple Plan definitely made their mark at Rock For People and won over the hearts of not only the festival attendees but also of most of the reviewers from the media that reported about the festival later on. Let’s have a look at those!

IReport rated SP’s performance as “great” in its photo report. A positive review also came from the music website Fakker, which stated that “it’s impressive how this group still has so much to say to the world of pop and punk even after nearly two and half decades.” IRozhlas agreed that Simple Plan have truly presented themselves in “the best light”. It also pointed out how much of an interest of the crowd Simple Plan created with their performance at Rock For People and how Pierre Bouvier won the crowd over with his “broken Czech” (note from SimplePlan.cz: Pierre actually consulted us on his Czech backstage right before the show and surprised us by how many phrases he still actually remembers). A no-less positive review came from the news website iDnes.cz, which highlighted the work of Simple Plan’s sound engineer Frank Joly and rated the entire SP performance as an “honest, likeable and most importantly very well-performed and exciting pop-rock show.” Another great summary of the whole concert came from MusicServer. In their post, the authors even mentioned SimplePlan.cz with a short thank you, for which we wholeheartedly thank them right back!

“And a special thank you definitely goes to Dominika from the fantastic fanclub SimplePlan.cz, which alongside other websites about Yellowcard and Foo Fighters belongs to the best Czech fansites ever. And because the band from Montreal has become to know Dominika very well over the years, they often like to thank her at their Czech shows. And we too have to send her a word of thanks because it is thanks to her that the concerts of these pop-punk veterans are so much more heartwarming here than anywhere else.”

– MusicServer.cz [article] –

And it was precisely this thank you from Pierre to SimplePlan.cz right before he kicked off the last song off their set, which has become the highlight of the day for us. Once again big thank you, Pierre! In case you haven’t seen it on our social media yet, we are including it on a video below (big thanks to Hanka for sending in the video!)

It was clear that Simple Plan are very aware of the rock atmosphere of Rock For People, which is why they chose to give their setlist a little bit of a rock spin. The setlist, which consisted of 18 songs, brought us some special tracks we haven’t heard live in a while including “Me Against The World” or “You Suck At Love”. During SP’s performance, the band also invited two female singers to sing with them on stage: Taylor Acorn was featured on Jet Lag and LØLØ helped Simple Plan out with I’m Just A Kid. Check out the full Rock For People setlist below: