Canadians know how to rock – period! Sure, Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Sidney Crosby and all other Canadian hockey stars can “rock” the ice rink, but, damn, Canadian rockers can take down the house too. Sold out summer stage The Stone Pony at Asbury Park, NJ just barely survived full onslaught of variety of punk rock. And if anything, we Blame Canada. Canadian rockers SUM 41 and Simple Plan just wrapped up their co-headlined North American The Blame Canada Tour 2022. So we caught up with them on hot, steamy night by the famous Jersey shore in the famous Jersey rock venue to witness one of the last shows in the tour.
Written by Andris Jansons
Night started off with very colorful performance of American band Set It Off. I was able to witness the band wrapping up their set. Some very joyous music, as colorful as the bands members themselves, and setting off many positive vibes.
Simple Plan came on stage as sun started slowly setting. With no backdrop banners, some contrasting clouds and blue sky set the beautiful natural backdrop. For a Simple Plan this tour served as a way to commemorate 20th Anniversary of their debut album No Pads, No Helmets …. Just Balls, and the band opened their set with the song taken from that album called I’d Do Anything. Other songs from album that were played were Addicted, I’m Just A Kid, The Worst Day Ever and Perfect which served as a conclusion for their set.
Se full photo gallery for Simple Plan here.
Bands vocalist Pierre Bouvier kept constant contact with the crowd and made quite a few references of the previous times band played in New Jersey. He even let the fans play with his balls …. Ughh, the inflated beach balls that is. Why, what did you thought? One lucky fan even received signed by Pierre beach ball. Later during I’m Just A Kid song the bands drummer Chuck Comeau addressed the crowd about pandemic and tour postponements and decided to crowd surf, but not before putting on a yellow hazmat suit with hazmat facemask, and when fans “returned” him to the stage he got disinfected with some smoke guns. A little lighthearted step back from all the stress we suffered in the last two years.
SUM 41 barged on to the stage like a Nor easter winds from the Canada in the middle of January. We, Jersey people know that all too well. Fittingly, just before the band came on the AC/DC’s TNT blasted from the speakers, just to give way for SUM 41 to blast first three songs – Motivation, The Hell Song and Over My Head (Better Off Dead). All three songs felt like one, relentless onslaught of hard-hitting punk rock with Dave Baksh shredding like a true metaller and vocalist Deryck Whibley delivering aggressive vocals. Same goes for everyone else on the band. Everyone was fully immersed in the moment and performance.
See full photo gallery for SUM 41 here.
SUM 41 dedicated this tour to their 21st Anniversary of their debut album All Killer No Filler. And while they played four songs from that album, rest of the set was nicely filled with the material from most of their discography.
Band delivered a hard-hitting punch for the night as crowd was going off in the pit and crowd surfers came forward like ocean waves crashing the Jersey beach.
Both Canadian bands are now scheduled to travel to Europe for better part of September and October, and later SUM 41 will join Offspring for their Australian Tour.