Plastic Bertrand – "Ça plane pour moi" (1978)

I am the king of the divan!

Ça plane pour moi!

On the final day of my recent trip to France and Belgium, I visited the In De Vrede café in Vleteren, Belgium, to taste what many beer writers call the world’s best beer – the Westvleteren 12 quadrupel ale brewed by the monks of the Saint-Sixtus abbey: 

A lesser man might have rested on his laurels after such an accomplishment.  But if you know me, you know that I AM NOT A LESSER MAN!  

So before I headed to the Brussels airport for my flight back to the good ol’ U. S. of A., I drove to the village of Esen – which is about 25 kilometers northeast of Vleteren – to visit the De Dolle brewery. 

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On the way to De Dolle, I stopped briefly at the Belgian military cemetery in Westvleteren, which is one of the nine cemeteries in the province of West Flanders that was built to hold the remains of Belgian soldiers killed in World War I.

The Westvletern Military Cemetery is the final resting place of some 1207 Belgian soldiers:

The Belgian population in World War I was overwhelmingly Catholic, and the cemetery at Westvleteren includes a large statue of Jesus Christ on the cross:

The standard Belgian grave marker is classical in appearance and features a small black, yellow, and red Belgian flag:

But a number of the graves of Belgian soldiers from Flanders – the northern half of Belgium, where the predominant language is Dutch – are marked with a heldenhuldezerk, a distinctive tombstone designed by a Flemish soldier of Irish descent named Joe English:

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To understand the heldenhuldezerken, you have to understand that all Belgium is divided into two parts.  (Only those of you who took Latin in high school will get that joke.)

As I noted above, Dutch is spoken in the northern half of the country – which is known as Flanders.  The southern half of Belgium – which is known as Wallonia – is French-speaking.  

The French speakers dominated the Belgian government for decades after the country became independent in 1830.  Those Belgians who spoke Dutch were not happy when French was made the official language of the country.

When the Germans invaded Belgium in 1914, they made Dutch the official language and created a Dutch-language university in Ghent.  (French was the language used in all Belgian universities prior to that.)

Some of the Flemish Belgians collaborated with their German occupiers.  Most did not, but there was still considerable tension between the Belgian Army’s many loyal Flemish soldiers and their French-speaking officers during World War I.

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Take a closer look at the top part of that heldenhuldezerk from the Westvleteren cemetery:

Do you see the AVV-VVK letters on that tombstone?  Those letters stand for Alles voor Vlaanderen, Vlasnderen voor Kristus – “All for Flanders, Flanders for Christ.”

The bird on the heldenhuldezerk is the blauwvoet (“bluefoot”) bird, which was a symbol of the 19th-century “Flemish Movement," a political movement that sought greater autonomy – even independence – for Flanders, and equal legal status for the Dutch language.  

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My next stop after leaving the Westvleteren cemetery was De Dolle Brouwers, which is housed in a building with a brewing history going back to 1835.

But De Dolle is about as untraditional as a Belgian brewery can be – at least when it comes to attitude.

The exterior of the brewery makes it very clear that De Dolle is not your father’s Belgian brewery:

So does the men's room:

(I "deleted" some De Dolle beer here myself)

There were only a half dozen or so beer lovers in De Dolle’s tasting room when I arrived.  But I knew I was in the right place when I saw that the young bartender was wearing an Allagash Brewing t-shirt.  (Allagash is a wonderful Maine brewery that I visited several years ago.)

I took my beer to the brewery’s patio and fell into a conversation with two guys from Amsterdam who were shocked that I had not visited their fair city on my European jaunt.

The De Dolle patio

Later the bartender and another young man from the village came outside and fired up a joint to accompany their beers.

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I had a long and very pleasant conversation with that young man.  We went back inside the tasting room so I could buy him a beer.  Then he insisted on buying me one – which was the last thing I needed at that point.

The De Dolle tasting room offered only a few beers.  My favorite was their Oerbier, which means “original beer.”  It’s a 9% ABV beer that was De Dolle’s first product:

De Dolle also makes a triple-style ale named Dulle Teve – which means “Angry Bitch.”

The brewer, Kris Herteleer, explained that the De Dolle slogan – nat & straf – means “wet and strong.”  He poured me a free sample of a 2015 Oerbier that tasted somewhat wine-like.  (Herteller served it to me in a wine glass.)

The colorfully attired Kris
Herteleer serves an Oerbier

I’m not sure if it had been aged in a wine barrel, or if the beer simply displays vinous qualities when aged.  Either way, it was a delicious and truly memorable beer.

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Hertenleer is a legend among Belgian craft brewers.  Here’s an excerpt from a 2017 post about him on Olutkoira, a Finnish (!) blog:

Kris Herteleer, who founded the De Dolle Brouwers brewery in West Flanders, was an art school graduate with no former experience of brewing.

“My brother had brought a beer kit from England and that was actually our first experience of making beer,” Herteleer says.  “It led to us homebrewing as a hobby and we eventually moved from malt extracts to real malts and hops and substituting tap water with spring water.”

I'm not sure why this classic convertible
is parked in the De Dolle warehouse

Although the first attempts didn’t bring the desired results, the enthusiasm of the Herteleer brothers was not so easily cooled.  Three years of persistent experimenting followed, and the brothers also turned to what few manuals were available to improve their technique.

According to Kris Herteleer, homebrewing was not very common in Belgium at the time.  Finding supplies was not easy. “We were students, and when we went to a maltings to buy a 50-kilo bag of malts, the salesperson inquired suspiciously what we would do with it.  Brewing beer at home was not forbidden but he perhaps thought we were planning to sell our beer without a license.”

Setting up your own brewery was considered a crazy idea at the time. . . . The microbrewing boom took flight much slower in Belgium than in the UK.  A total of 86 new breweries were established across the Channel in 1980–82, compared to a mere two in Belgium. . . .

A De Dolle Oerbier

Oerbier, the first commercial product of De Dolle Brouwers, saw daylight in November 1980.  The Herteleer brothers gave it that name (meaning “ancient, original beer”) because they wanted to bring customers genuine tastes made of genuine ingredients, instead of the bland products of the big breweries.  Seven different malts were used, and local character was brought in by Poperinge hops and Rodenbach yeast.

The little yellow man of the De Dolle Brouwers labels, bearing some resemblance to the Michelin Man, depicts a stylized yeast cell holding a traditional roerstok [i.e., a stirring tool] in his hand.

This is the silent rebellion of the 1980s microbrewers against the conventions of the previous generations.  “I wanted to avoid having ruddy-cheeked monks, imaginary saints or Gothic lettering on our bottles,” admits Kris Herteleer. 

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As I was sipping and yakking with Herteleer and my young dope-smoking friends, I suddenly heard horns honking in the distance.

Belgium was playing England for third place in the 2018 World Cup that afternoon, and I guessed that the locals were celebrating a Red Devils goal by tooting their horns.

It turned out that the horns were being honked by a convoy of large trucks (sans trailers) approaching Esen.  I and my companions ran outside to see what all the hullaballoo was about:

(That video may be my grandson Jack’s favorite thing in the world.  He loves trucks, fire engines, and busses, and I think he would watch those airhorn-blasting trucks barreling through Esen all day long if I let him.)

I’ve been unable to figure out what the hell those trucks were up to.  Someone at the brewery said that there were disabled children riding in the cabs of those trucks, and that the point of the whole noisy exercise was to give those children a thrill.  I’ve been unable to confirm that explanation, but I hope it’s true.

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On that note, 2 or 3 lines bids adieu to Belgium and especially to the gang at the De Dolle brewery.  It’s been a long time since I’ve had a more pleasant and entertaining afternoon.  

Here's De Dolle Kris Herteller,
flanked by my two new BFFs

Thank goodness they closed when they did or I might have never made it to the Brussels airport in time for my flight back.

Which wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world, now that I think about it.

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I featured Plastic Bertrand’s “Ça plane pour moi” in a 2 or 3 lines post back in 2014, but if any song deserves an encore on my wildly successful blog, this stick of dynamite does.

There's a snippet of the 1978 Plastic Bertrand hit, "Ça plane pour moi," in the Wolf of Wall Street.  I don’t recall hearing it before I saw that movie in 2014.  (Don’t ask me why the French don’t capitalize song titles like normal people.)

Plastic Bertrand (whose real name is Roger Jouret) is a Belgian songwriter, producer, and television presenter.

Here's an excerpt from his Wikipedia page -- which uses English words but can't really be said to have been written in English:

[Roger Jouret] was born in Brussels of a French father and Ukranian mother.  At the age of nine, he became a singer and drummer in the Buffalo Scouts Band, a group he formed with the Boy Scouts, who performed covers of Rolling Stones songs.  He later formed a band called The Pelicans who performed at parties, later changing their name to Passing the Time, extending their act in bars, clubs and at festivals along the Dutch and Belgian coast. . . .

In 1973 he entered the [Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels] to study music theory, percussion and music history.  Influenced by the punk movement, he created in 1974 the band Hubble Bubble, sharing his time between study at the Conservatory, rehearsals and concerts with the band, and work as stage manager at the Theatre des Galeries.  

In 1978 Hubble Bubble released their first of two albums, also titled Hubble Bubble.  Jouret is credited as the songwriter, singer and drummer under the name "Roger Junior."  Unfortunately, the group's bass player was killed in an accident returning from a rehearsal, and the group disbanded.

Plastic Bertrand actually isn't the singer of "Ça plane pour moi" -- although the record says he was.

The song was actually recorded by its composer, Belgian pop star and music producer Lou Deprijck.  (Yes, that is an unfortunate name, isn't it?)  It's not clear why Deprijck didn't want his name on the record.  But for some reason, he chose to pay Jouret a whopping 0.5% royalty to be credited as the singer on "Ça plane pour moi," which was a top-ten hit in most European countries (but not Belgium) and eventually sold almost a million copies worldwide.

“Ça plane pour moi” is an idiomatic expression that can be translated as “Everything's going well,” or “Works for me.”

I love the song to death.  It is sung mostly in French (not Dutch), although there are a few lines in English.  (See above.)  The lyrics are completely nonsensical in any language.

Click here to listen to “Ça plane pour moi.”

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: