[ Home | Press Clippings ]
The Day - July 13th, 1995
Reproduced below is an article that was published in The Day, a local newspaper in New London County, CT.Fan Spins Web For 'Reducers'
by Steven Slosberg
(Originally published in The Day 7/13/95)
Reducers-ravers, now it's your Web, too.New London's abiding house band, the Reducers, intact, recording and performing after 16 years, has been accorded the cutting edge in rock worship, its own home page on Internet's World Wide Web.
The Web site is the handiwork of Michael Dreimiller, 34, a systems analyst at Vitro Corp. in Groton, who started bulding the page, as he expresses it, in the spring under the guise of polishing his Web skills for Vitro, a defense contractor specializing in sonar software engineering.
As for his Reducers' bona fides, he says he's the guy usually standing against the wall just beyond the bar and into the band area at the El 'N Gee in downtown New London whenever the Reducers' play their home base, and has been faithful to the group since its days at the defunct Ba Ba O'Riley's on Bank Street in the late 1970s.
He's done for a local band - most likely, the only local band so bestowed - what the megagroups get. Call it the fanzine from cyberspace.
"It's pretty remarkable," say Peter Detmold, one of the band's guitarists who's blissfully computer challenged. "We've given him carte blanche to do this."
For those computer-capable, the Reducers' Web address is: <http://users.aol.com/Reducers/>.
"Back in February, we were putting together a little proposal for the NUWC (Naval Undersea Warfare Center) facility we support and we set up a Web server and got it running," says Dreimiller. "The money for the proposal never came through, but we had the Web server up. I was looking for a project to develop my Web skills, so I started building the page."
The data
"Except for the occasional file labeled "under construction," what the Web crawler encounters on The Reducer's home page are color photos of the four lads; a complete discography, including the three vinyl albums and two CDs on the band's Rave On label, as well as 12 [sic] EPs, four compilation albums and 4 singles; album covers; reviews and other tidbits; gigs; collector's items and related trivia.Soon there will be audio and video downloads, too.
Dreimiller's at work on loading 15-to-30 second samplings of songs to the page that can be tranmigrated to a home computer. He's also go a video tape of the group performing at Ba Ba O'Riley's, and wants to add that.
Dreimiller says maybe 100 to 200 "unique visitors" have found the Reducer's page, at least 25 traced to Connecticut College, where the band has always had ample air time on the college FM stations, WCNI.
On Monday night, the Reducers will be playing at the Continental, a club in Manhattan, part of a week-long, 15-club, 350-band music festival in New York. It's being sponsored by Macintosh, which will have cameras at the clubs to scan live performances, or at least digital photos, onto PCs.
To Dreimiller, it's more wonders of the Web. To Detmold, it's another opportunity for fans to stay home.
"This is what bothers me," said Detmold, who has part-time jobs at Mystic Disc in Mystic and the Dutch Tavern in New London. "I'd rather see people being able to come to the clubs."
After the New York festival the Reducers, still garnering good reviews in the rock press for last year's CD, "Shinola," have a Southern tour, including New Orleans and Austin, lined up.
But, with a site on the Web, the hometown band's already gone global.
It's the cyberspin on their 1986 album, "Cruise To Nowhere."