The current iteration of Black Crack Revue (also known as BCR), the longstanding Kansas City collective originally inspired by the Sun Ra Arkestra, performs an early show at The Ship on Saturday, May 13.
Concert Review: Alter Destiny at Charlotte Street Foundation
Original image by Plastic Sax.
Dwight Frizzell asked “what is reality” during the debut performance of Alter Destiny at Charlotte Street Foundation on Thursday, October 27. Members of the audience of about three dozen were likely pondering the same question.
After all, it seems impossible that Frizzell is still at the top of his game well into his sixth decade of making music in Kansas City. Frizell has challenged assumptions about how improvised music in Kansas City might sound since the 1970s.
Alter Destiny, Frizzell’s theatrical new trio with guitarist Julia Thro and percussionist Allaudin Ottinger, is a fresh twist on the interplanetary jazz the musicians create with the Kansas City institution Black Crack Revue. The larger ensemble observed its fortieth anniversary with a celebratory concert in August.
The trio shares BCR’s enthusiasm for traveling the spaceways blazed by Sun Ra. Improvisations over a recording of the aurora borealis were enhanced by a video backdrop of celestial spaces and bursts of theremin from guest artist Kat Dison Nechlebová. Quadraphonic sound furthered the interstellar experience.
The immersive sensibility wasn’t limited to the loudspeakers surrounding the audience. Frizzell and Ottinger roamed the room during an inventive jam and Frizzell occasionally exhorted the audience to unleash their minds in an effort to “alter destiny.”
Thro’s raw electric guitar riffs prevented Frizzell’s woodwinds and electronics and Ottinger’s airy rhythmic pulses from developing excessive ethereality. Even so, Alter Destiny stretched credulity throughout an unreal performance that was beyond belief.
Concert Review: Black Crack Revue at Westport Coffee House
Original image by Plastic Sax.
Just how weird can 100 Midwestern baby boomers get? Very weird, if the assemblage at Westport Coffee House for the 40th anniversary concert of Black Crack Revue is any guide. The free-spirited people who paid $15 for entry on Thursday, August 4, provided an outlandish visual counterpoint to the extraordinarily accomplished and often absurdist music of BCR.
The lack of inhibition displayed by fans of the self-proclaimed “Afro-nuclear wavabilly funk swing reggae Turska” band is rooted in the era prior to cell phones and social media. BCR, an ensemble partially inspired by an extended Kansas City residency of the Sun Ra Arkestra in the early 1980s, acted as inspiring ringleaders.
The current edition of the interstellar jazz and alternative pop ensemble consists of original members including Thomas Aber and Dwight Frizzell as well as more recent additions like Pat Conway and Julia Thro. The accomplished woodwind specialist Michael Eaton joined the large cast during the 95-minute opening set.
BCR is just as inspiring and energetic as it was in the early 1990s when it was a fixture on the calendars of Kansas City nightclubs. Then as now, the ensemble is best during its astral jazz excursions, but wacky pop-leaning songs such as “Teenie Boppers in Atlantis” and “Rappin' Kierkegaard” filled the dance floor on an extraordinarily peculiar night to remember.