Halloween 73: Limited 4CD Box Set

Throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, the iconoclastic composer Frank Zappa put on a series of spectacular, now legendary, shows around Halloween each year to celebrate his favorite holiday. Before settling on New York in 1974 to host his annual costume-clad festivities, which would continue until he retired the tradition in 1984, Zappa, fronting an exciting new band, performed two rousing back-to-back Halloween concerts the year prior at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago. Whereas many of the NYC shows were not recorded due to the musician’s union charging exorbitant fees making it virtually impossible to allow Zappa to record the event, there were no such restrictions at the Chicago show – in true Zappa fashion it was of course taped.

Now for the first time ever, Zappa’s two complete Halloween shows recorded on the 31st October, 1973 in Chicago, will be released on the 25th October via Zappa Records/UMe, just in time for Halloween. These completely unreleased live recordings total more than four and a half hours and feature songs from across his prolific catalog, including his then just-released 1973 album Over-Nite Sensation and forthcoming 1974 record Apostrophe, as well as early arrangements of compositions like “Penguin In Bondage,” “Dickie’s Such An Asshole” and “Village Of The Sun” that would appear on later studio and live albums. Continuing the Halloween series that the Zappa Family Trust began in 2017 with the acclaimed Halloween 77 releases, Halloween 73 will be released as a specially designed, limited run four-disc costume box complete with a FRANKenZAPPA mask and gloves, housed in a display worthy box. Produced by Ahmet Zappa and Vaultmeister Joe Travers, the boxed set is rounded out with a 40-page booklet featuring detailed liner notes from Travers and Ruth Komanoff Underwood and Ralph Humphrey, Zappa’s bandmates who played in the shows, and a wealth of never-before-seen photos from the event.

The two full shows will be presented on discs 1-3 with the fourth disc dedicated to unreleased rehearsals recorded just before the tour started. A single CD version titled Halloween 73 Highlights, which collects together 16 handpicked performances from both shows, will also be available. The concerts were recorded on 1/2” 4-track analog tape which was stored in pristine condition in Zappa’s personal Vault. The tracks were digitally transferred in 96K/24B from the original analog tapes by Travers in 2019 and mastered and re-mixed by Craig Parker Adams. Both the deluxe boxed set and Highlights album will be available digitally for streaming and download. Preorder for all versions are available now. All boxes preordered via Zappa.com will come with an instant grat download of the song, “The Idiot Bastard Son,” taken from the first show, as well as an additional track at a later date. Digital preorders of Halloween 73 will also come with the free downloads.