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The Day - May 13th, 1998
Reproduced below is an article that was published in The Day, a local newspaper in New London County, CT.
Roof collapses on part of
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Smashing Guitars Not Part Of Act
by Steve Slosberg
(Originally published in The Day 5/13/98)
Hard hat in hand, and heart aflutter, Peter Detmold hastened down State Street at noon Tuesday, wondering how much of his life he'd be able to salvage.His life, in the flesh, was intact. His music, his last 20 years, was in ruin.
Detmold, approaching his 20th year as guitarist and vocalist with New London's house band, The Reducers, had been up in the third-floor apartment on State Street he uses as storage and practice space on Saturday.
Had he been there Monday morning, when a portion of the roof collapsed at 52-56 State St., he says he would have been killed.
"The I-beams came down through my apartment," said Detmold. "It would have killed anybody in there."
Wearing a hard hat, and with the blessing of building inspectors and engineers, Detmold has been trying to assess how much of his music collection - 30 guitars, some 1,500 records and an assemblage of amps - survived the roof's collapse and Monday's rain.
The third-floor space was also a repository for Reducer' memorabilia.
On Tuesday, as he hurried off to one of his day jobs - at Mystic Disc in downtown Mystic, Detmold had just been back up to take a look.
He'd already retrieved perhaps half of his guitars and many of the records.
"I got a couple of my favorite guitars out, including the first one I ever bought, a Guild acoustic," he said. "But I saw that part of the cover was smashed. That one's a goner. I got it at Caruso's. I'm sure Richie and Larry (the brothers who own Caruso's Music on State Street) will replace it."
Detmold, who lives on Ocean Avenue, has rented the State Street space for about 18 years and once lived there. The band still uses a room on the third floor to practice. The room destroyed by the roof collapse was the band's office, and Detmold's storage space.
In Tuesday's sunshine, a broad expanse of blue sky gaped through the roof.
"I'm still not sure what I lost," said Detmold, who also tends bar at the Dutch Tavern in downtown New London.
"It looks like a bomb went off in my room. It is completely demolished. At this point I'm happy with what I got out. More than 15 years of collecting is up there."
John DeNardis, an artist in downtown New London for some 19 years, also rented space on the third floor and once used it as a studio. He's since moved his paintings and sculpture to a studio on Golden Street. However, he continues to use the State Street space as an office.
"I was up there at 11:30 the night before and stopped in to use the office. My computer's up there," said DeNardis. "That's a fine old building. The facade extends above the roof about 6 feet, like an old stone wall."
The building, which also houses several businesses, is owned by F. Jerome Silverstein, a local real estate agent and appraiser. The street and sidewalk in front have been cordoned off. Lower State Street is closed to traffic.
One of the businesses affected by the collapse - Urban Flava - was barely a month old. Last week, the owner and friends and family were boisterously shooting a commercial there.
Although Detmold was able to save some guitars and much of his vinyl record collection, he was unsure about the fate of several amplifiers. He also could not gage the extent of water damage and what's become of old Reducers' posters and the like.
The band - Hugh Birdsall, Steve Kaika, Tom Trombley Detmold - has been together since 1979.
They've produced three albums and two CDs and enjoy a staunchly faithful following in the city, invariably packing the El 'N' Gee.
Through all that punk rock history, though, this had to have been the first time Peter Detmold wore a hard hat while holding a guitar.