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| Shadowland, 1990 (from left): Kevin Fitzgerald (drums), Eddy Kurdziel (guitar), Darren (vocals/guitar) and Brent Rademaker (bass). |
A&R executive and producer Tom Zutaut had his successes with Mötley Crüe and Dokken with Elektra Records, repeating those chart achievements with Guns N’ Roses (the biggest-selling debut album of all time), Hanoi Rocks, the Stone Roses, and Telsa while with Geffen.
Then there’s his Geffen-era misses with Half Way Home, I Love You (a little alt-rock stank; toured with Soundgarden), Little America, the Nymphs (more press for their antics than their music), Salty Dog (actually, in terms of radio airplay, the most successful of the lot), and Warrior Soul (alt/nu-metal with a little radio stank on it), as well as the Florida bands of this discussion: Rock City Angels and Young Turk (each with at least a little MTV Headbanger’s Ball buzz).
Now, while those bands haven’t made their ill wills with Tom Zutaut, if any, internet-public: the Rademaker brothers, Brent and Darren (vocals/guitar and bass vocals, respectively), were not at a loss of words for blaming one of rock’s most successful executives — as well as their producer, Pat Moran (Lou Gramm, Robert Plant, Iggy Pop, Queen, Rush) — for the critical lambasting of their two albums. The most acidic, courtesy of the renowned Trouser Press, stated Shadowland’s ’60s trippy-influenced, self-titled debut (1989) was “an embarrassingly obvious attempt to jump-start a pretty-boy arena career with a misbegotten and overheated mash of Tom Petty, the Waterboys, U2 and Sunset Strip glam-metal [the band left Tampa for L.A for their signing].”
Ouch.
Regardless of the lack of critical acceptance and radio airplay for the debut — which, in the wake of the scathing reviews (Trouser, as well as other publications, referred to them as “poseurs”), no official single was released — Geffen put them back in the studio for the sophomore release, The Beauty of Escaping (1990); its lead single, “Garden of Eden,” failed to chart.
Two years later, with indie college rock bands like Dinosaur Jr. and Pavement gaining critical and mainstream acceptance in the noisy Seattle backwash, the Rademaker brothers and their drummer, Kevin Fitzgerald, along with a new guitarist in Josh Schwartz (replacing Edward J. Kurdziel; maybe Shadowland’s woes were his fault), ended up sounding like, well . . . Dinosaur Jr. and Pavement.
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| further, 1993. Photo: Trisha Cluck/Discogs. |
Returning to Tampa and christening their new, alt-rock lo-fi noise-pop reinvention as futher (yes, in the lower case), their indie debut, Grip Tape (1992), took Tom Zutaut to task with the smarmy “Death of an A&R Man.” Taking no prisoners, Trouser Press once again took the Rademakers to task: “. . . here’s irrefutable proof that any bozo with a fuzzbox and a pair of earplugs can be J Mascis [of Dinosaur Jr.] or Stephen Malkmus [of Pavement].” Oh, and jabs about “croaky off-key singing” and “. . . we know you own guitar tuners [from your Shadowland days].”
Double Ouch.
So much for an album produced by the esteemed Wharton Tiers (of Dinosaur Jr. fame, natch, as well as the like-minded Hole, Quicksand, Sonic Youth, and Teenage Fanclub). As the band’s career advanced — prior to their 1997 demise — across a series of albums, EPs, and 7"-inch singles, the band sounded less like Dinosaur Jr. or Pavement and more akin to fuzzy British shoe-gazers Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, and Verve — with a contribution to a Joy Division tribute album as a clue to their on-going development (and coolness).
Brent earned well-deserved critical acclaim from the Grateful Dead-inspired Phish jam-band crowd with his Los Angeles-based alternative country concern Beachwood Sparks founded in 1997, releasing records on the Seattle-based Sub Pop. By the 2000s, Brent and Darren regrouped, recording for Rough Trade and Sub Pop as the cleaner-sounding, Buffalo Springfield-inspired the Tyde. Darren Rademaker’s Tampa-based, new-wave/punk teen-band, the Straight-Jackets, digitally reissued their 1978 to 1981 recordings in 2022.
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You can enjoy the debut EP, the full-length Beauty, as well as the music of further, on Over the Edge Radio You Tube.
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