The Reducers - Japan Tour 2004

Peter's japan photos

Hey all! I've been a bad Reducer! It's taken me forever to get my photos from the tour up on the web site, but they're all there now, for your viewing pleasure! (Go to the "photo gallery" section of this site.) There's a lot of great pics, but the ones that really knock me out are the shots that I took from various stages during our shows over there - if you thought that we were exaggerating the response that we received over there, just have a look at those photos! That'll give you an idea of what we were dealing with! It was nuts, and those shots give a good indication of just how crazy it was, every show we played! (Man, I want to go back!) Once again, I recommend the "slideshow" format, since there are a lot of photos to get through. Hope that you all enjoy them! (Sorry that it took me so long!)

Check in here once in a while, since I know that other stuff will be surfacing - Steve & Hugh both took some photos, and maybe they'll make an appearance. Also, I know that Richard is going through his vast stock of video footage, and will be posting the occasional video online. (I hope everyone was able to view the "Get Out of Denver" video from the first Shelter show.) I've had a preview of the next potential posting - us doing "Capital Radio" with guest vocals from our pal Shintaro at the final show in Tokyo - maybe the third or fourth encore that night! It's great!

Looking through this batch of photos brings back such great memories, and reminds me of all the great new friendships that we were able to establish in Japan. We can never say enough about how great our hosts were - Jimbo, Fifi and Fink were with us every step of the way, and Firestarter's mysterious bassist Sammi was also a wonderful guy! (What is it with mysterious bassists?) On our final night in Tokyo he presented me with Japanese baseball cards, souvenier baseball stufff, and an impossible to find LP of demos that he did with Fink in the Raydios - a band they had between Teengenerate and Firestarter. Priceless! Thanks to all the guys in Firestarter - friends for life! But, also I realize that we met and got to know so many other great people in the short while that we were in Japan - it's just amazing! I miss them all!

Also - we'll have a limited supply of the Japanese tour t-shirts available soon! We should have them in a couple of weeks, and once they're gone, that's it, so if you want one.....stay tuned!

That's all for now.

Dead Air Radio - July 14th with Peter

Peter did his first Dead Air radio show last night since his return from Japan. Check it out here (40MB filesize).

Shelter Video

Get Out Of Denver Video

Shaky!

BIG, BIG, full screen version.
20mb!! Good for super-speedy, office type internet connections.

Medium size version.
12mb. Good for speedy, home type internet connections.

Tiny little version.
5mb in size. Also good for home internet connections, but it will still take a while if you use a dial-up modem.

As an internet user it's your right to wait as long as you'd like for any size file, so if you've got the time and want to see the big video in all of its supreme shakiness, please click! Then wait.

Sailfest

At Peter's request I'm attaching two of my (increasingly blurry) photos from Sailfest yesterday. It might be time for a new camera. Just wait until you see Peter's great, fully focused photos from the tour...

Steve is gravity-challenged in this shot from Sailfest and that's why I like it.

Monday, July 12 (post-Sailfest)

Whew! - A wild weekend in New London. The Reducers played on Saturday night and it all went great! We played two sets, with the spectacular Grucci fireworks in between. (I'll put up set lists tonight maybe.) The response was great, the weather was perfect and the band played really well - it was great to be playing through our own amps again! All the equipment that we used on our Japanese tour was fine, but not what we're used to. I love my Hiwatt amp, and aftrer 20 years playing through it, I know how to get a good sound! (It only took me about twelve years.) Speaking of Japan, we put the banner that Coggi made for us up behind us on stage on Saturday and people seemed to get a huge kick out of it. We were all still running on the adreneline that built up playing with Firestarter and the other great groups we played with in Tokyo and Osaka. (I wore my Firestarter t shirt!) Now we take some time off, after a very busy few weeks.

Richard came up from NYC for the show, and I hope that he'll be putting some of the photos that he took up on this site so everyone can see them. Also, I got my photos back from our time in Japan and I'll be sharing those any day now. They're great, and the shots I took of the audiences are amazing! (Tachi seems to be in every one of them!) Look for them soon!

As they say, the beat goes on!

Dead Air Radio follow-up

Hugh played a lot of great music on his radio show Wednesday night. If you missed it live you can listen to an archive of it here (this file taken offline on July 15th). Grab it, stick it in iTunes, load it on your iPod and give it a listen.

Dead Air Radio tonight

Just a reminder to everyone that Hugh is going to be on WCNI from 6-9pm EDT tonight, July 7th (that's 7-10am Thursday July 8th in Japan). He'll be playing a bunch of music that he brought back with him from Japan, and I'll sure that many of the bands they played with on the tour will be heard on tonight's show. If you live within broadcast distance of the station tune in with your radio and leave the limited number of Internet connections available for people who can't pick up the station over the airwaves.

New London - July 7 - Wednesday

Just a quick note to let anyone reading this know that Michael has put up a whole mess of the photos that Richard took during the duration of our little tour. They're located at the posting labeled "photo gallery" and you can view them in groups of about a dozen, up to as many as twenty something! Since there are so many, I recommend using the "slideshow" function which puts up the photos one after another for about 3 seconds each.

Hopefully we can begin to caption them all, but even without that, you'll start to recognize the regular cast of charactors - our excellent hosts Jimbo, Fifi, Fink, and new friends Shintaro, Masa, and Tachi, etcetera, etcetera... And you can track the progress of Richard's beauty of a shiner (sometimes even 3 seconds can last too long)!

Stay tuned....my batch of photos, which will include numerous shots of the crowds, taken from the various stages we played, should be up on this site before too long.

We hope to see you all at Sailfest this Saturday evening!

Audio Files from First Shelter Gig

I thought I'd share a little bit of audio from the tour, and I'm going to try to post different mp3 tracks from each show as the weeks progress.

These two songs were recorded on June 25, 2004 at Shelter in Tokyo.

Life In The Neighborhood

Get Out Of Denver

ENJOY!

Out of hibernation

Sorry to take so long to make an entry. I slept for about twenty-four hours straight, and even then I was still a bit spaced out. Now I'm back among the living and trying to take stock of what we've just been through.

It all seems kind of dreamlike, except that I have evidence that I was really there - autographed copies of Firestrater/Teengenerate CDs, as well as sweaty clothes that smell like beer and cigarette smoke... and crystal clear memories of the beautiful Japanese countryside, the electrified cities, friendly Japanese faces, conversations with Japanese friends, and this ringing in my ears from the GREAT Rock and Roll I witnessed firsthand at Shelter, Pipe69, and Statto. This experience is burned permanently in my memory as one of the high points of my whole life. Thanks again to the people and circumstances that made it all possible.

Today I'm going to try to make a demo of a new song I'm working on, called "Rockin' on Tokyo Bay." Will post the demo if it comes out OK.

I'll also try to listen to all the CDs and 45s I brought home to prepare for tomorrow night's radio show which will feature many of the bands we played with, plus bands we talked about, bands that were recommended to us, and music that was in the air while we were in Japan. Hope you can tune in.

Looking forward to Sailfest gig on Saturday, so that we can display those cool banners that Coji made. What a knockout!

One more thank you to Jimbo and Fifi, and the rest of the crew. You are the BEST! Friends for life!

New London, July 6 early am

Okay....our most excellent fantasy dream life is now over, and it's time for me to shake the jet lag and starry eyes and get back to "real life" as I know it - in a few hours I'll be back flipping burgers on the grill at the Dutch. But, please believe me when I say that I will never forget what we just experienced in the past two weeks, nor will I ever forget the kindness of our host's over there! The people we have met in Japan have been the most gracious guides, and enthusiastic fans, and wonderful friends that we could ever imagine! And, as I cook burgers, and change kegs, and mop floors at the the Dutch in the upcoming weeks, the memories of our trip to Japan will make everything easier! Maybe it's the lack of sleep, but I feel like I'm floating on air! (Or maybe it's just the change from Sapporo to Budweiser!) I am still very glad in my heart! (Oops...yeah, it's probably the Bud!)

The real reason that I'm writing this at such an ill advised time is to assure everyone who's checking in that we're not through chronicling this trip! Many more photos and memories will be forthcoming, although it won't be from such exotic places as has been the case for the past two weeks. Richard is no doubt assembling video and photo montages as we speak! And, I'm sure we'll all check in with some newly remembered highlights. Even Mr. Pleasure!!

Stay tuned! And I hope we'll see you all at Sailfest this Saturday.

Back To Brooklyn

Well it took 13 hours in a tin can flying through the sky (as Tommy might say), but we finally made it back to JFK. Martha met us in a spiffy van, helped to pack us in and gave me a ride to my apartment. Of course I managed to steer us in the wrong direction from JFK, but hopefully everyone enjoyed the extended, if unintentional tour of glorious Flatbush Avenue. Heck, we even spotted an enticing little restaurant along the way...

Anyhow, The Reducers should be back in New London in a few hours after a safe (but oh, so lengthy) plane trip. We're all a little tired but still thrilled with the experience. I think we'll all continue to write notes over the next few weeks and try to go into more detail about some of the more interesting adventures, so stay tuned.

Tokyo - July 4 - Sunday noon

Okay...it's time for our excellent adventure in Japan to end unfortunately. A long airplane ride is what lies ahead of us. Our time here has been unbelievable, and last night's gig was no exception. The Shelter was filled to the absolute maximum - literally wall to wall people. (The photos will prove this!) A great final night here. Firestarter played ferociously, and the opening band, Pay Channel were equally excellent. Crowd was with every band every moment of the night, and after we were done our set, and FOUR encores(!) the after show party continued for hours! We have so many new friends here, and it was hard not to try and thank each one of the individually. Two girls cried at the mention of our leaving today, and I am not making this up! We were blown completely away by the affection and respect that we have been treated with! It is time to leave for the airport, and so this will be our final message from Japan.

The Reducers love Japan, and have great new friends here!

Shelter Club/ 7/3/04 Set List

Here's the blow by blow account of last night's performance.

Out Of Step
Black Plastic Shoes
She's Having A Meltdown
San Antone
Subject To Change
Fashion Of The Times
Going Going Gone
Can't Hardly Wait
Information Overload
Life In The Neighborhood
She's A Wind Up
Let's Go
Rocks
Some Other Time
Stay With Me
I Call That Living
Scared Of Cops
Company Man
That'll Be Just Fine
No Ambition
Pub Rocking
So Civilized

Encore 1:
Ready Steady Go
In The City
Hurt By Love
Going Back Home

Encore 2:
Hippy Hippy Shake (w/Fifi)

Encore 3:
Rockaway Beach

Encore 4:
Capital Radio (w/Shintaro)
She Does It Right/Route 66

Just a quick note before I gather up my bags for the return flight. There are so many great memories from last night and the past week (I will never forget Tom teaching the words "Tall Boy" to one of last night's party guests) and I hope we've been able to share some of these moments via this web blog. I'll get more photos to online as soon as I return to Flatbush Avenue, and with luck we can continue to share and recount the minute details of this amazing trip.

And my shiner? Ooooph, it's still there but its color has progressed from a cringe-worthy mucky black hue to a mild wavy purple that looks like half finished makeup job off of an early record by The Cure. Time to put on the shades.

Goin' back home...

Bleary eyed Sunday

5 hours sleep - gotta pack and hit the road in a couple of hours - utterly exhausted...

Lots of superlatives last night - subalashi! CHO KAKOY! (Fantistic, Really Cool). I think the place must have been sold out because you couldn't move an inch without stepping on someone's toes - literally shoulder to shoulder. First band was Pay Channel from Kanazawa about 6 hours drive away (past Kyoto). Great songs, cool guitars, very friendly guys, from a small town, just like us. I tried to hang in the audience for Firestarter but got too battered by frantic pogo dancing after half the set and had to retreat to the dressing room. Once again Firestarter rocked hard and fast, but we got cheated out of an encore, ostensibly because Fifi broke two strings.

We played a solid ninety minute set, including I don't know how many encores. They kept asking us back and we kept going. Highlights - a chaotic version of Hippy Shake with Fifi on guitar, and Peter on lead vocal. Steve and I figured out a little late in the game that Firestarter plays Hippy Shake in A, while we play it in E. A glorious cacaphony. Capital Radio with Shintaro on vocals again. This time we got it right. Ready Steady Go, In the City, Rockaway Beach...we pulled out all the stops....the crowd was insatiable, but we finally called it a night when I broke strings on both guitars.

The after party went from 10:00 till past 2:30 and was still going on when we took our cabs back to the hotel. Countless autographs and Photo ops. Many shouts of Kampai. I was told it was the biggest after party in memory.

(My apologies to Kazu for spelling his name with a "u" instead of an "a" in a previous entry. He explained that when spelled with a "u" it's pronounced KOOZOO and means "trash." Oops!)

This Wednesday I'm going to do a special on Japanese Rock and Roll on the Dead Air Show (6-pm to 9pm on WCNI of course)- accessible with Quicktime software through a link on the Reducers webpage.. We may have some Japanese listeners tuning in on the web, Thursday morning between 7 am and 10 am. Hands across the water.

Thanks to everyone here for giving us the time of our lives. Words cannot sufficiently express how grateful I am, how grateful we all are, for having this chance. Fifi, Fink, Jimbo and Sami - You ROCK! Tachi, Cogi, Cohe, and Tomi (Sp?) You ROCK! This experience has been a stupefyingly postive one from start to finish. Looking forward to seeing Japanese bands playing in our area sometime soon. I like Bill Dumas' idea of chartering a 747 for our next Japan tour - let the fans meet each other!

Masao, who interviewed me on line for Doll Magazine, has proposed releasing a single on his record label, with the Reducers covering a Firestarter song and Firestarter covering a Reducers song. Cool idea!

While this is the end of our tour, I sense that it might be the beginning of something cool...Who knows?

Sayonara...