The Reducers

The Reducers were a punk band from Bury Lancashire formed in mid 1977 and signed to Vibes Records. Things Go Wrong / We Are Normal (Vibes 1978). Classic mid tempo grungy bass driven single a la Stranglers with Lou Reed’s ‘Vicious’ melody with a lovely bored ‘1,2,3 4’ intro. Extremely catchy melodic punk. Came in 2 diffrent colour sleeves.

Another single, though not in the same league, Man With A Gun/Vengeance/Can’t Stop Now (Vibes 79) – this one came with a sticker and strangely had A Side played at 45RPM and the B Side at 33RPM! The B Side tracks are the more interesting.

One more single Airwaves from 1980 when The Reducers had surprisingly signed to EMI and were suddenly a synth pop band!

Rob Tynan (Guitar & Vocals) Hi, I’m Roy Tynan, guitarist and founder of the Reducers along with Graham Holden (Raggy), vocals back in September 1977. Unfortunately Graham died in a road traffic accident about 1998 after emigrating to South Africa a few years earlier.

The original line up was myself on guitar, Graham vocals, Dug on bass and Graham Barstow drums. Dug left after our 1st gig December 1977 to be replaced by Stuart Lyons (what a guy) on bass who was the main stay bassist for 2 years or so.

After Stuart left he was replaced by Steve Rutter (damn fine musician and good chap). Graham Barstow left after 18 months or so and we had a couple of drummers after that. Unfortunately one drummer much later ended up in a bad way due to drugs and alcohol, I hope he’s ok.

The first year of the Reducers was so much fun; sex drugs and rock n roll it certainly was 🙂

Rob Tynan,YouTube

Rob Tynan (Guitar & Vocals) This song was a mess start to finish, not because of anyone in particular, just a set of events. Broken amps, car crash on route to the studio, drunken mates in the studio getting in the way. Raggy and myself coming to blows because of nothing really.

I never liked this song, I wrote the music pre punk days circa 1975 when I was in a “rock” band. Raggy had just written some lyrics, I was messing with the song trying to do something else with it, Raggy and rest of the band went hey that’s ok we’ll use that.

At the time we had better songs one in particular named Patrolling Wire Boarders, which I wanted to rework and record. Tony who owned Vibes Records was paying for this single and overrode our choice. As a band we wanted Man With A Gun to be in our live set but not a record.

The B side, WTF was going on there then? Grungy song about Vengeance and then a song Can’t Stop Now with one of Raggy’s drunken mates somehow getting himself onto the recording and then the sleeve note. I’d left the studio that evening and it was sneaked in behind my back, I actually quite like it :- ) Technically I don’t know what went on with the record pressing as the A side was 45 rpm and the B side 33 rpm, very odd.

There comes a time in all bands when you say to yourself, “I don’t really give a fuck any more”. This was one of them moments, perhaps the beginning of the end for me.

Rob Tynan,YouTube

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