HALLOWEEN 77

Just as the Mothers of Invention's residency at the Roxy in December 1973 formed the basis for Roxy and Elsewhere and Roxy: the Movie before eventually being issued in full as The Roxy Performances, so too did the six shows they play at the Palladium in New York at the tail end of October 1977 turn out to have a rich destiny. Backing tracks and the like were harvested by Zappa from this for Sheik Yerbouti (along with some sounds from the later Hammersmith Odeon show in early 1978), the shows were filmed for the Baby Snakes movie, and now expansive sets are available for those who wish to do a deep dive in this.

There's a hard copy CD version which just offers the show on Halloween itself (with some bonus tracks from the previous day), or there's download stuff out there which lets you explore the whole residency. On the first two days Zappa and his band played two sets per day, and we get all four of those here, with essentially identical setlists. Still, Zappa fans know that there's enough improvisation in his material that two rundowns of the same set are going to have intriguing differences here and there.

The day 1 and day 2 sets at points seem a little rushed at points - in particular, the band are audibly galloping through Punky's Whips - presumably because with two shows crammed into one day, they had some running time constraints they had to contend with. By comparison, the day 3 and day 4 shows have more room to breathe, hence this being where the setlist gets to vary a bit more, with day 3 having a bit more material at the start of the set and a runthrough of San Ber'dino at the end and some other deviations from the standard setlist midway through (running through early drafts of Sheik Yerbouti material which isn't quite ready for prime time yet and a highly unusual rendition of King Kong), and day 4 having an additional Black Napkins in the encore.

These shows offer a sort of middle ground between Zappa In New York and Sheik Yerbouti; there's also early passes at Conehead from You Are What You Is, though in a near-unrecognisable form. I wouldn't put this on the level of the Roxy material - there's a bit less variation, and this band isn't quite as technically adventurous as the mid-1970s Mothers (though they come close), and Zappa's lyrical direction at this time loses me a bit. On top of that, rushed sections in some shows and haphazard moments in others means there's no one set here which is 100% solid from start to finish. Nonetheess, this is a deep well of music to explore and it's a lot of fun doing so, especially with the epic workouts of Wild Love, turned from a brief time-filler as it appeared on Sheik Yerbouti into a half hour improvisational extravaganza.