Big Head Eddie

by Thom JurekIssued way back in 1993, the first Vandermark Quartet recording is a stunner in hindsight. Listeners have come to expect grand things from this band, and here it's easy to see why. Though eventually expanding into a quintet, the Ken Vandermark group here were truly setting their sights on turning the musical world upside down with their blend of free jazz, vanguard composition, rock, funk, Monk, and junk. Featuring bassist Kent Kessler, drummer Michael Zerang, guitarist Todd Colburn, and Ken Vandermark on reeds, this band set out to blow minds with their very first track. "Kiss the Plow" opens with a typical free jazz head that builds steam before exploding into Colburn's guitar pyrotechnics that push at the margins of what the instrument is actually capable of. Vandermark dovetails him and skronks his way through until the group offers the only possible kind of closure. "Blue Coffee" recalls both Monk and his mirrored dialectic, Herbie Nichols. Colburn composed this as a vehicle for the band to vamp out and really swing through not one or two sets of changes, but an entire harmonic palette. The set closes with "Not Actual Size," which juxtaposes West Coast jazz, serialism, and a myriad of complex rhythmic and melodic ideas all wound tightly inside a small intervallic figure Vandermark has designed for the purpose of unwinding everything at once. This is a stunning debut, and a high sign that musically everything was about to get very interesting.