Simple Plan are sprawled on a couch three minutes before their TRL debut, fidgeting, squirming and gushing a hybrid of French and English. The Canadian quintet is here in New York to perform the hit single, "I'd Do Anything," an MTV standard that spent three months in the Top Ten and peaked at number six. The success of the video, featuring Blink-182's Mark Hoppus, has helped fuel sales of their debut, No Pads, No Helmets . . . Just Balls (currently in the Top Fifty), and land them an opening slot on Avril Lavigne's spring tour.

When Pierre Bouvier (vocals), Jeff Stinco (guitar), Sebastien Lefebvre (guitar), David Desrosiers (bass) and Chuck Comeau (drums) finally take the stage, it's like a scene from A Hard Day's Night. Fans swarm around them, mouth the lyrics and bounce up and down.

"We didn't really grow up with MTV, because we're from Canada," says Comeau, "but we heard how big it was. I thought it was really rad that they would step up and put five new bands on." Comeau's referring to MTV's "Spankin' New Music Week," a five-day festival of pop-rock music the TRL spot is part of. Good Charlotte, the Used, the Donnas and New Found Glory are also performing.

Simple Plan are conscious of and comfortable with the category they've been placed in, and the problems and the benefits that result. "I think, as far as us being 'right now,' we're proud to be from this scene," Comeau says. "It's a really diverse thing, and I think when you're a fan of this kind of music, you can tell the difference between the Used, and Something Corporate, and Blink and Sum 41. I just think you have to care enough to see the difference."

Simple Plan formed three and a half years ago -- the first incarnation, Reset, was the start of the Bouvier-Comeau collaboration that still produces the lyrics of most of Simple Plan's songs. "I met Chuck my first year of high school," explains Bouvier. "We were in the same class, we became friends and we started our first band. We played together for about five or six years, and then we broke up." Why? "We hated each other," says Comeau, laughing. "I searched the whole city of Montreal just to shut him up, but I couldn't find anybody that I wanted to play with."

Since those days, two things have always been at the center of Simple Plan's plan: a sense of humor, as the title of their album would suggest, and the do-it-yourself attitude characteristic of their punk forefathers. "We wrote the three treatments for our videos," Comeau explains. "Who else would know better about what we like and what we're like? We wrack our own brains. The cover [of the record], or anything we do, we do it ourselves."

After they bound off the stage to close their TRL performance, backstage they speak over and at one another, thrilled with the experience.

"I can't believe we're doing all this," raves Comeau. "All the stuff you envision and dream about, all happening. We're like the kids in the crowd that got really lucky: Somebody gave us instruments and now we're on stage playing. We still get so stoked to go on tour with bands just so we can watch them every night."

Watch the "I'd Do Anything" video

LAUREN HARRIS
(March 5, 2003)