Simple Plan Compete With Not By Choice And One Short To Show Off Their Pop-Punk

We have reached the point of saturation.

If you figure that this pop-punk thing has been in circulation for seven years, it's only a matter of time before it gets so watered-down that Great Big Sea could sport bleached liberty spikes and claim punkness.

Still, the kiddies have got to start somewhere and this was clearly it. Virtually everything revolved around single digits, from the $6 tickets that were putting a massive dent in mommy's plastic, to the average age of said ticket-holders.

Imagine if Polkaroo barfed up all the kids he's been eating over at the Romper Room (eliminate the competition, yo!), giving them studded belts and three bucks for coat check.

One Short: I was too busy trying to find happiness at the bottom of my pint glass to responsibly catch any of their set. By the time I scraped it off the bottom rim and hustled to the venue, they were done. Sorry.

Unlike their less-than-flattering ChartAttack-CMW report card, Not By Choice were on, man. Like fire! The hit of the evening, they wrangled the capacity crowd into submission with energy, vitality and upbeat tunes played to near perfection. Kickin' out a half hour of Blinky pop-punk, it's a wonder how these dudes are slagging it out with day jobs while their hometown buddies Sum 41 are livin' high on the hog. In the words of some aging hippie: "Your time is gonna come."

Previously known as Reset (or at least some members were), Montreal's Simple Plan are clearly being touted as the Next Big Thing. Pokes at their musical integrity aside (I'm feeling kind), they did have a respectable band-audience relationship. They were also impressively tight as an outfit, even if their songs were slower than a Carpenters reunion gig.

Let's put it this way: if their pop-to-punk ratio were a mullet, they'd be sporting a 90/10 in favour of pop. While the evening was relatively flawless (and somewhat dull) a few moments proved just how fresh this band really are. After the big 40 minutes on stage, the singer promptly announced it was time to go (lack of material perhaps?) before calling out Cheap Trick's "Surrender" with an informative "We didn't write this."

Then it was into the, uh, hit(?) single and it was encore time, forcing the singer to again introduce a cover that they "didn't write either." One must praise Simple Plan for trying to grasp onto their roots while struggling for the American Dream, but by God, at least leave enough rope to hang yourself if all goes wrong.

Yes, it's great to want to inform the ignorant public of said roots, but performing a lackluster, half-time version of Bad Religion's "American Jesus" ain't the way to do it. Then again, why not?

The kids don't know it and the old schoolers wouldn't be within 50 feet of the venue. All in all, given this show's absolute absence of punk, Simple Plan would do better to take over the empty Moffatts throne.