It's been several years since I worked on this site, and I even thought I'd lost it until yesterday. But it's back, baby. And it doesn't look nearly as bad as I expected!

The band hasn't been active for a while, but it's still a good time to be a Leslie Spit Treeo fan. Back in 2001, Wikipedia and Youtube didn't even exist. Now the Leslie Spit Treeo has a Wikipedia entry. Videos are being posted on YouTube, including some new ones from Pat Langner. I even heard a rumour that Laura, Jack and Pat would get back together in 2013...

I learned that little fact at their open stage. Pat, Laura and Jack got together again, to celebrate the Cameron House's 20th anniversary. I missed their opening set, but I had a great time there. The open stage performers were mainly old regulars: Craig Stewart, Dennis Chaisson, Dwight and Sue Peters, Reggie Bovaird, and me of course. Bob Snider, who they've always admired, took the stage too, as did some newcomers who did Christian music.

It was a great to see all the old folks, including some abstaining musicians like Kevin Quain and Max Metrault. The place was absolutely packed. The Spits returned for a closing set that was really neat. They played old material, some so old that it was new to me. One stand-out was their epic about going swimming in a polluted lake. At one time, it was their most-requested song.

It felt like a really special performance, and I was sorry I'd missed some of it. Sometimes they were reading the lyrics, and sometimes they made mistakes. But I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

But don't worry; they're doing it again. You can catch them this Friday, October 12 at The Cameron. And who knows when your next change may be?

Things have changed at The Cameron, and this Spit Friday was unlike any other. The house was packed, and mostly with non-performers. Jack was on stage. There was a contest to guess the collective weight of the band. It was pay-what-you-can. It started on time. The room was nicer. Even the beer I used to drink there, Red Baron, has changed in flavour.

Everyone in the band's doing different things. Laura's singing Jazz. Pat's being a dad. Jack's working at the Cameron, and he's a dad, too. But there was never any break-up, no bad blood or hard feelings. They just took "a nap" in Laura's words. It make it easy for them to get together again, and I hope we'll see even more of that. But I won't take for granted. See you at The Cameron!

Spit Fridays, an open stage hosted by Pat and Laura of the Leslie Spit Treeo, will make a brief return to the Cameron House this October. There will be a couple of Spit Fridays, in the back room of the Cameron, as they always were. Sax man Dermot Whelan originally tipped me off, and a Cameron House staff member confirmed that this was the plan. She had no further information-- we may have to wait and see.

I'll update this if/when new information comes in.

While the Leslie Spit Treeo hasn't been completely inactive since 1998, they've been very quiet. Last thing I heard they were involved in was a fundraiser for Fat Albert's, which is another open stage, held on Wednesdays at Bloor Street United Church.

Laura has been active on her own, doing jazz, and releasing a CD called "My Girlish Ways".

The Leslie Spit Treeo's canine member, Tag the Dog, has gone to that great gig in the sky. Bad weather friend Kevin Quain passed on the news. Apparently, Tag's death was due to old age. He was 16 years old.

Tag was with the Treeo from before the beginning, when the Leslie Spit Treeo was a pair of actors and a writer who got a gig at the DuMaurier Theatre Festival. He wrote the introductions of their CDs was featured on their covers, and even wrote the song "Dog's Life". For the past few years, he's been living with Pat Langner and Pat's partner, Colleen.

Kevin Quain and I dedicated songs to Tag at The Mad Bastard Cabaret, Kevin's monday-night open stage. I covered "The Sound".

More on Tag.

The question was answered this past Monday, as Laura took the stage with Bo Basiuk at the Mad Bastard Cabaret. She explained that she's not used to playing guitar while vertical, since she usually plays while lying on a futon. If this is not her actual guitar debut, it's pretty damn close.

Laura and Bo both played their first number, then Bo played the remaining two solo.

It was interesting to see Laura play guitar--it was the opposite when Jack Nicholsen sang along at the Ultrasound (recording Chocolate Chip Cookies). Jack didn't know what to do with his hands when he wasn't holding a guitar. Laura, on the other hand, is restricted in her performance. There's a whole range of things that holding a guitar stops her from doing. She can't move around as she usually does. I remember, in particular, one time the Leslie Spit Treeo performed "So you say." Laura did a perfect mime of being handcuffed and pushed down on a police cruiser. That's one of the things you can't do while playing guitar.

I think it's great that Laura's stretching herself. But it also makes me realise how much more there is to her performances than her amazing singing.

4000 and counting.

December 31 1998

Just yesterday, the Page of Reflection finally cleared 4000 hits. Today, we're up to 4014. I'm going to go party. Or is that 'cause it's New Years' Eve?

P.S. The chat feature is once again fully operational, and it now permits html markup.

Chat added

December 29 1998

I've just added a chat feature to this site, so all you visitors can talk to each other. I'll be sure to keep an eye on it, too. Enjoy!

Site news

November 20 1998

Talk about odd-- this site won an award from Canadian Musician magazine last July. I only found out about it yesterday; I'm not sure what went wrong. Anyhow, it's an honour to be among the six sites they selected for the Best Band Site award. Hope you're enjoying it too.

Treeo is taking a nap

November 5 1998

It's been a while since we've seen much action from the Leslie Spit Treeo. Shows are few and far between. I spoke with Laura Hubert last night, and she says the group is taking a break until the new year. "It's been a busy 10 years," she said.

A nice surprise

August 26 1998

I spend my Monday nights at the Mad Bastard Cabaret at Grafitti's. It's an open stage, and this week we were fortunate enough to have Laura Hubert and Bo Basiuk drop by. They did some of the delta blues material that they usually do together, like "Midnight Special". Bo is a treat. Laura's a treat. Together, it's a treat².

It was an especially good night, with many great performers, including Tony Hightower (just back from on tour), Max Metrault, Jeremy Robinson (just back from touring), Michelle Rumball (just back from on tour) and our fabulous host, Kevin Quain (who played along too). If you've got a monday night free, drop by the Mad Bastard Cabaret at Grafitti's, 170 Baldwin, in the deep, dark, mysterious heart of Kensington Market, every damn Monday night of your life. It's where some of Toronto's best musicians come to play.

Spits on Tour

July 4 1998

I don't usually update the website when I'm under the influence, but there's some pressing news. So deal with it.

In a massive conspiracy of silence, everyone has lulled me into the belief that nothing new was happening. In fact, the band is going on tour, and it was only finalized recently. They depart at 10:00 a.m. today. I found out about it at their gig at the Tranzac tonight.

Jason "Sweatpea" Reed is sleeping over in T.O., and they'll pick up Shaun somewhere on the 400. It's apparently a three-week deal. I'll have dates listed soon.

Happy belated Canada Day, and happy Independence Day to my yankee readers. Have a good weekend; I'm off to my uncle's cottage.

No News

June 23 1998

It's not that I'm lazy or ill-connected. I've seen Laura a couple of times in the past month. I ask her what's new, and she says, "not much". So there you go. No news. You heard it here first.

More Stuff

May21/24/26 1998

I just put up two articles, written by the Pat and Laura themselves. The first is Excerpts from Hell's Kitchen. The second is their Garden Variety Bio. Enjoy!

I've put some new pictures in the information section and corrected Shaun Noronha's name.

There is now an MP3 of Chocolate Chip Cookies (the song, not the album)available. Shift-click here.
Note: I got permission to do this. If you don't get permission, that's illegal, same as taping a CD for a friend.

Pat's Kid

May 10/20 1998

Sorry, gang, but I've been holding out on you. Pat became a father a few months ago. It's a boy. I was waiting until I had more information before I posted this news, but I've been unable to contact Pat.

The Lycos Community Guide has a page where people rate Canadian music web sites. The good news is, we're #5. The bad news is, our rating is a 68. Now all students (like myself) know that a 68 should always be bumped up to a 70. So if you think we deserve it, please visit their site and vote for us. Update:we're now at #4 with 75%. Take that, Hank!

Check out the new Treeo Jukebox, where you can hear Leslie Spit Treeo songs in RealAudio. If you have Javascript and RealAudio, click here to start it up. And let me know what you think of it.

Fonts (???)

April 4 1998

I've been meaning to mention this for a while now. This site uses Georgia and Arial and Verdana fonts. You can download them all at Microsoft for free.These fonts rock hard. Verdana and Georgia are much more legible than Times New Roman or your run of the mill fonts because they weredesigned specifically for the screen. I use Georgia as my default font in Netscape. You can read more about them here.

I plan on using dynamic fonts here too. They'll only work on the 4.0 browsers, and IE needs a small (60k) activeX control. But they'll look pretty neat, I promise! If you want to see dynamic fonts in action, visit TrueDoc.

Finally, I've done some under-the-hood site maintenance. If anything got messed up, drop me a note.

The Doh department

March 17/26 1998

Well, the hits counter has been skyrocketing recently. The folks at E.D.S. have decided we're a Tasty Site of the Week local flavour site, and we also got links from RealTime, when they played that concert (see Feb 18/19 below). So now we're comfortably past the 2000 hits mark and we're getting 2.6 hits per day. Why ain't I smiling?

Porn. See, my transfer stats show that the most-read page is the old version of "She's a Slut" from Book of Rejection. I was puzzled. Then a co-worker pointed out that most of those hits likely come from people looking for porn. On the other hand, it looks like a select few porn surfers are staying to read about the Leslie Spit Treeo. So I guess it's not all bad. But that's why the counter's been going bezerk lately, and I'll have to remove it from the BOR pages, I guess.

Nation-wide Radio Play

Feb 18/19 1998

Tune in to CBC Radio 2 on Saturday 11pm (confirmed)
The Leslie Spit Treeo is going to get a whole hour of nationwide radio play later this week. CBC's RadioSonic, the successor to the beloved Realtime, is playing a concert they recorded in September, when the Treeo played at the Vancouver's Purple Onion.

The show airs Saturday, January 21. RadioSonic runs from 7:00 pm (local time) to midnight. The concert will air at 11 local time, midnight in Atlantic Canada, and 12:30am in Newfoundland. You can listen to CBC Radio 2 on the radio (94.1 in T.O) or in on the Internet in RealAudio. (The RealAudio server seems to follow Eastern Time, e.g. Toronto time.) And they linked to this site!It's all very exciting. Can you say "tape?"

And six days later, they're performing for real at Reverb. (There are (at least) three "rooms" (places where performances are held) at the Big Bop, so make sure you go to Reverb.)

Tweaking like mad

Feb 3 1998

Sorry about deleting the review of the C'est What show. Here's a precis: "It was a nasty day to be out, but they were worth it. I think they've improved, and I didn't think there was anything left to improve."

What's going on is this: I've been playing with the site design. Users of NS3, NS4 and IE4 should see what I mean. I now have this fun, red, event warning thing on the top of the page. And NS4 people are getting direct access to all the articles, info pages and albums.

Oh, and I subcategorized that monstrous info page into several pages. Hope you enjoy the new edition. Sorry it's a bit slower to access.

You really like us!

January 13 1998

This site's popularity continues to grow. We now get two hits per day. We recently passed 1500 total hits. Thanks. We couldn't have done it without you. Look for more cool stuff in the coming weeks.
Oh, and now we're counting your visits, no matter which page you hit first.

Treeo in T.O.

January 8 1998

Dwight Peters tells me that the Treeo will not be touring again until the spring. They're focusing on two things right now: a video and the U.S. You can look forward to more Toronto gigs in the next few months. (I have listings for three gigs in the next month or so).

There's also a rumour floating around that the Leslie Spit Treeo will take over the Cameron House open stange. Unfortunately, Cindy Mathews, who runs the Cameron, is not available to confirm or deny it. Remember, it's only a rumour.

Treeo makes top 10 at TWAS, Site turns two

January 3 1998

Glenn McDonald runs an excellent music review site called The War Against Silence. It covers all kinds of music, and Glenn adds to the reviews with acecdotes and insights that are pretty special all by themselves. He can make you read reviews of music styles you dislike!

In his top ten list for '97, he gave Chocolate Chip Cookies the number two spot. Everclear and Veruca Salt tied for number one. Here's a quote:

And now, some site news: this site has lasted for two whole years!
It had very humble beginnings. I'd only seen the Treeo perform once. I didn't know the Toronto music scene. I had no idea what was going on with the band. Hell, I didn't even know what Pat and Laura really look like. The site had no visitors, except a few people who visited my home page.

Now, I've seen the Treeo perform more times than I can count. I've seen Jack Nicholsen perform with them, and I've seen Pat and Laura perform with Jack's band. I even performed with them once, myself. (I wasn't very good and they never asked me back, but it was still a fan's dream come true.)

Now there are people in Treeo management who keep me up to date with show dates and band news. Now, I not only know Laura and Pat's music, I know them as people too.

And not only has the site grown, it's been endorsed by being listed in Chocolate Chip Cookies liner notes and their newsletter, Spit News. It gets a whole 1.9 visitors a day, where it used to be lucky to get 1.0. And that counter just keeps counting. Where are we at now? 1400 and change?Yeah, there's been a lot of change in the past two years. But the site's design always remained the same.

Until now.

It's time for a fresh coat of paint. Time to say one last goodbye to the round imagemap and the parchment-style background. Time for a new look. One that looks good in Netscape (1-4), IE3 and Lynx. It will also be a better basis for DHTML enhancements.

I've also moved all the song clips into RealAudio 28.8, which makes them faster to download and give me space to put the whole song. (Too bad MPEG Layer 3 sounds much better at the same compression rate--RealAudio's the standard. Besides, MPEG encoders always go screwy on me.)

Let me know what you think of the new design. I always enjoy hearing from people who use the site. Best of the new year to you all!

Aaron Bentley (aaron@aaronbentley.com)

Spit History up

November 23 1997

Sorry about the delay, but the history of the Leslie Spit Treeo (as told by them and me) is now up in the FAQ. I've also got show dates up to December 21 (Thanks, Dwight). There will probably be more updates in the future, but I'll try to announce them when they're actually online!

A whack of dates

October 26 1997

Wo-hoo! I've got more show dates than you can shake a stick at. From November 5-22, 14 shows. And a few more are yet to come. Thanks to Dwight Peters for the info.

The show at the reverb was great. The Reverb is a strange place. There's three rooms where musicians perform. Tony Hightower was opening for the Spits, but I missed most of his show, 'cause I was in the wrong room.I've got pix of all the Treeo members now, but I still have to get some developed, and I need to scan others.

Updates for a new season

October 11/18 1997

I'm sorry, and I won't do it again. I let my life get in the way of the Page of Reflection. I know better now. The Leslie Spit Treeo is my life! But seriously, university, two jobs, yada, yada, yada. There's more than a little news since my last update.

Jack Nicholsen Cindy Mathews have gotten married. Jack has changed his name to Jack Mathews. It's apparently quite tough being an actor with Jack Nicholsen as your name. I wish Cindy and Jack all the best. I'm sure they'll be happy together.

Clay Tyson has started a new friday-night open stage at The Cameron. That seems to be a clear indication that Spit Fridays are gone forever. However, when I asked them about Spit Fridays in the interview, they said they'd always done an open stage, even before Spit Fridays. If they start a new open-stage in a while, I won't be surprised. (But I will be happy!) As for Clay Tyson's show, I haven't been to it. A friend of mine says some of the old crowd are back, but many are still away. Especially the poets, who are not welcome at this open-stage.

Dermot Whelan isn't an official member of the Leslie Spit Treeo, but he has played saxophone with them an awful lot. He broke his hand recently, and has had trouble with his little finger since the cast came off. He will not be having surgery (as I reported earlier)-- he'll be doing physiotherapy.

Meanwhile, the Spits are in town for a bit, but will soon head out to tour some more. I'll let you know where and when as I get more info.Oh, and the site passed 1000 hits a short while ago. Who was visitor number 1000? Little old me. Happy Canadian Thanksgiving everyone!