Soggy – "Waiting for the War" (1981)

Waiting for the war!

Waiting for the war!

During my two-week-long sojourn in France and Belgium last month, I managed to fit in four bike rides.

Three of my rides were on ungainly European city bikes with only three speeds – suitable for short rides from one’s apartment to the office or campus in street clothes, but not at all the thing for a nice long ride in the country:

A European city bike

The fourth ride was on a mountain bike that would have been perfectly adequate if the frame hadn’t been far too small for me – even with the seat post extended as far as possible, my legs came nowhere near being fully extended when I pedaled.

But a bike ride on a crappy bike is better than no bike ride at all, so I made the best of it.

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My first ride was in Reims, which has the hardest-to-pronounce name of any French city.  (It’s somewhere between “rinse” and “rance.”)

Reims is an ancient city – it was founded circa 80 B.C., well before Julius Caesar conquered Gaul – where the coronations of most of the kings of France took place.

The Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Reims

The most famous such coronation was that of Charles VII, who was crowned in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Reims in 1429 after Joan of Arc liberated the city from the English.

Reims is also the commercial center of the Champagne wine region, and many famous champagne-producing houses (including Mumm, Taittinger, and Veuve Cliquot) have their headquarters in Reims.

These stools in the Reims tourist office were designed to resemble champagne corks:

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The Canal de l'Aisne à la Marne, which skirts the western edge of Reims, is about 36 miles long.  (That’s 58 kilometers for those of you who don’t hail from the good ol’ U. S. of A.)

To get to the paved towpath, I had to drag my ungainly, befendered beast of a bicycle up a long flight of stairs to a bridge that crossed the canal.

The Canal de l'Aisne à la Marne

Once I got to the towpath, I promptly headed off in the wrong direction.  I eventually figured that out, reversed course, and headed for Sillery, a village that’s about 10 miles southeast of Reims.

I passed a couple of canal boats – péniches in French – while riding.  Most such boats are owned and operated by husband-wife teams, who often bring their car along on the trip:

See the car riding on top of this péniche?

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I got back to our hotel in the middle of the afternoon, just as France was taking on Uruguay in the quarterfinals of the World Cup.

Les Bleus fans

The Place Drouet-d’Erlon – a pedestrian-only square in the middle of Reims – is full of outdoor cafés and bars, which were full of drunken young Frenchmen (and Frenchwomen) watching the match on television:

This young man is enjoying what the locals call a girafe (which is French for giraffe), a long-necked drinking apparatus that holds 2.5 liters of beer:

Une girafe

Perhaps hoping to sign up a few of those patriotic young drunks, the French Foreign Legion – or Légion étrangère – set up a recruiting station in Reims that day:

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In the next 2 or 3 lines, I’ll tell you about my bike ride in and around hot, dry Chantilly – the horsiest place in France, but not a good place to be if you’re looking for a cold drink on a Sunday.

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Soggy sounded a lot like the Stooges or MC5, but they weren’t from Detroit – they were from Reims.

The group formed in 1978 and broke up in 1982.  They never released an album, but they did release one fabulous single, “Waiting for the War”:

That single sold well in and around Reims, and a video of the band performing “Waiting for the War” got a lot of airplay on the local TV station.

Lead singer Patrick Bertrand (who was known as “Beb,” and who insisted on singing in English instead of French) is shirtless in that video.  He’s been described as “Iggy Pop with a white Afro,” but his voice may be closer to Ozzy Osbourne’s.

Beb on stage

Shrine, a California punk band, covered “Waiting for the War” in 2014.  Beb heard about the cover and contacted Shrine, and the group appeared with him at a couple of punk/rock festivals.

Click here to view Soggy’s 1981 video of “Waiting for the War.”

Click below to buy the song from Amazon.  (You’ll be glad you did, brothers and sisters.)