Frank Zappa’s favorite holiday- Halloween- inspired some ofthe late iconoclastic musician’s most celebrated performances, and subsequentlysought-after recordings. His annualfright night runs in New York City produced many a memorable evening, orseveral, as a wonderfully-done retrospective set of his massive October 1977tenure in the Big Apple issued a few years back demonstrated. This year, the Zappa Family Trust hasreturned to 1973, and to Zappa’s appearance at the Auditorium Theater inChicago, for another themed box set featuring over four-and-a-half hours of previouslyunreleased material, including two full shows and rehearsal outtakes on fourdiscs, (as well as a costume mask and green hands to transform one’s self intoFRANKenZAPPA).
Zappa, himself, was transforming. The late October date marked only the secondtime this particular ensemble had performed live. Following the close of his European tour inSeptember, Zappa reconfigured his lineup, bringing in drummer Chester Thompsonand Napoleon Murphy Brock on vocals, sax, and flute. This would become a classic group during anequally classic period in Zappa history resulting in the legendary live album, Roxy and Elsewhere, largely recorded afew months later at the famed Sunset Strip venue. First, though, were these two shows, here intheir entirety, recorded on that fateful Halloween night in the Windy City,(back when it was standard practice for artists to perform multiple shows in anevening).
The pair of concerts, spread across three discs digitallytransferred from the original analog tapes and sonically pristine in theirfidelity, come with the expected several repeats on the setlist. Yet, as with any Zappa performance, no songis ever played the same way twice. That’s particularly notable in this case, as despite Zappa’s rigorousrehearsals, meticulous compositions, and top-shelf players, within eachindividual performance there was the constant human element; and these weresome seriously talented humans, providing a harvest bounty of improvisationalstretches and some of the finest musicianship ever displayed in progressiverock-and-roll.
Thompson and Brock pay immediate dividends, with thelatter’s vocals greasier and more animated and the former’s rhythms downrightfunky and thick. The encore of thesecond show- a medley featuring a trio of Zappa instrumentals: “Son of Mr.Green Genes/King Kong/Chunga’s Revenge”- is easily a contender for thegrooviest Zappa moment ever revealed on tape. Deftly comping George Duke’s keyboard mastery with such fitting answers onguitar, it’s a side of Zappa not noted often enough, with the 16 minutescontained within defying any listener to sit still.
There are great snapshots throughout, such as thefaux/genuine jazzbo leanings on an freshly birthed “Inca Roads,” or the gougingleads on “RDNZL,” or the flashes of riffs and vamps- especially Bruce Fowler’selastic trombone work and the mesmerizing mallets of Ruth Underwood- that moveso fluidly in and out of the complexity and the silliness. Even the rehearsals, laid out on disc four,detail the necessary equilibrium of Zappa’s approach; loose and joyous, yetcommanding and insistent. All totaled,it’s a magnificent collection, housed in a collector’s box worthy of display, withonstage and backstage photos featured on the disc sleeves as well as in the extensiveand informative 40-page booklet.
Zappa’s Halloween would leave the Windy City for NYC,starting in ’74 and continuing for the next decade, but not before this loneChicago howling left its permanent mark, becoming now an essential entry in hislegacy catalog.
