December 12th & 14th, The Tabor Arms, Prince George

It's been a long time since the Slugs have left a trail through Prince George... and we hardly recognize the place. I mean, December in PG and no snow?! What gives? We all bring gloves, toques, scarves etc., and I'm walking around with no jacket on! This is also the first time I can remember playing a club on Thursday night, then having Friday off, then playing Saturday again... weird... they have Karoake at the Tabor Arms on Friday night and it does so well on its own... especially when Elio takes the stage! I can't even remember what song he sings, but at least his fly wasn't open this time... (that's another story)...

Brock is the owner/manager here and he's very good to us... giving us free accommodations on the Friday we're not working in exchange for us making an appearance at the Karoake show... okay Elio, you're up! The club is sold out both nights we play, and we get so much audience participation here (read: heckling... just kidding), that on Thursday night, I time 'Day By Day'... including all the story telling and audience singing etc., that song ends up being over 10 minutes long! I think (hope) that's a record...

Doug, always searching for the answers to life's most thought provoking questions, asks the audience, "what's the secret to relationships?"... meaning that men and women are such different beasts, how to make it work? He's asked this question of audiences before, but I don't believe he's ever gotten an answer quite as direct and to the point. Of course it's a woman who has the answer. She walks right up to the microphone and very clearly says, "Shut up and hand over the paycheck." !!!!!!!!!!!!! And all this time we thought it might have something to do with caring, listening to each other, compassion etc... The answer is so simple and it's been staring us in the face all this time... just shut up and hand over the paycheck! How could we be so naive?

On Saturday, Doug and I do something we've never done before... the Prince George Spruce Kings (junior hockey team), have a game that night versus Nanaimo and they've asked Doug to sing the national anthem before the game... now, Doug's very shy so he asks me to go with him for moral support... and because it's kind of nice to have some accompaniment when singing I suppose... remember those words... 'accompaniment when singing'... I almost had no accompaniment when playing! We walk into the arena about 20 minutes before we're to perform... Doug and I are actually a little nervous... I mean, it's not a song you want to screw up! I'm sure most of us can remember Bryan Adams, and Tom Cochrane at the Grey Cup... things like that don't get forgotten about easily. It seems audiences of national events get a little sensitive about their anthems... go figure... so they tell us that we've got five minutes, ask us what we'd like to drink (they didn't serve what we really wanted)... and it's time... we're walked out onto the red carpet laid over our section of the ice... my keyboard is already set up there, turned on, ready to go... we're facing the Canadian flag... the introduction: "And now, with us, to sing the Canadian national anthem, here are Doug Bennett and Marc Gladstone of the group, Doug and the Slugs!"... and that's my cue to start the intro... I'm playing and barely conscious of the fact that the microphone is being handed to Doug just to my left... the organ is loud and it sounds good through the stadium speakers... now it's time for Doug to start singing... and...
and...
and...
and I'm all the way through to "... in all thy sons command"... and there's no Doug... not a sound through those speakers... I can hear him, because he's standing right next to me, but... so I'm praying as I restart the intro, that something - whatever - will fix itself by the time he should be singing... again... and there's this tiny sound as if from far away... just a single voice, yelling, breaking through my panicked state... "... switch it on! Turn the switch on! THE SWITCH! TURN THE SWITCH ON!!!!" Yes, it really happened that way... an on/off switch on the microphone... now, in Doug's defence, and because he'll kill me if I don't mention this, there usually isn't an on/off switch on a corded microphone... almost always on a cordless, but this was a microphone WITH a cord... on the other hand though, I think I may have mentioned before his similarity to the Sam Neill character in Jurassic Park... you know, near the beginning when Sam only has to touch a computer screen to have it crash? Well, Doug's kind of like that, but with microphones... so he flicks the switch and all is well after that... no problem with the words at all... I don't think the game was televised... if it was, it would only have been locally in Prince George... but we're ready now... bring on the Canucks!... only turn the switch on first, then tape it down, because in the NHL you have to sing the French part too and Doug will already have his hands full with that...

We're in Kamloops on December 19th... see you there! Marc.