Slugs, No Doug

Doug Bennett from Doug and the Slugs died last October. I just found out now, after surfing to their website.

I remember the first time I heard one of their songs. It was on a cassette I owned called "Rock 80", one of those K-Tel compilations (for those of you old enough to remember them). The song was "Too Bad" and it was the one I kept playing over and over (which was a little bit more of a pain with cassettes, kids, we had to manually set a push-button counter, and actually "rewind" the tape...).

In the 80's I actually saw them several times.

When I was at Acadia, they performed in University Hall, which was a fancy auditorium a little unsuited for their 'bar band' style of performance. Doug closed the gap by walking up the middle of the audience, although there wasn't actually a centre row to walk up. He just climbed over everyone. He eventually fell over, and at one point was lying on his back across my lap singing, with me and everyone else around us singing along.

Another time I saw them at the old Misty Moon in Halifax. In fact, I was so moved during "Making It Work" that I hopped up on the stage, danced up to the mike, and sung along for a few bars before deciding that the bouncers might not like this for very long. It didn't bother Doug at all. I think I must have had a few too many ginger ales that evening.

Anyway, to hear that Doug died made me a little sad. The energy in his singing would always lift my spirits. I think I'll go listen to some now. I could use a pick-me-up.