Starting in 1974 and continuing into the early 1980s, Halloween in New York meant a visit from Frank Zappa and his revolving collection of astoundingly talented cohorts. His concerts at The Palladium were legendary—comical, theatrical, outrageous and, of course, outstandingly musical—and word of mouth alone made tickets to each year’s runs highly coveted.

In 1976, he opted to switch up holidays and pushed his NYC run to four nights between Christmas and New Year's Eve after performing on Saturday Night Live on 12/11. (The week of Halloween he was in Philly appearing on The Mike Douglas Show to promote the release of Zoot Allures.)

Hits were not the draw at the time: All of his Palladium runs pre-dated “Valley Girl” and most of the shows came before his disco ditty “Dancing Fool” had anti-dance crowd singing “I may be totally wrong but I’m a fool.”

During his lifetime, Frank died in 1993, only one of the Palladium sets was ever released, Zappa In New York, culled from the 1976 shows and released in 1978 after censors blocked its release due to “Punky’s Whips.”

Zappa Records/UMe is revisiting those 1976 shows with a suite of expanded anniversary editions of Zappa In New York that will be released 3/29.

The expanded versions will be available as a five-CD box set, triple LP set and digitally. The five-disc collection will be housed in a limited-edition metal tin shaped like a NYC street manhole cover and includes a replica ticket from one of the shows. The four additional discs are loaded with relevant vault nuggets and more than three hours of unreleased live performances from the Palladium concerts.

Frank’s band at the time comprised Ray White on vocals and guitar, Terry Bozzio on drums and vocals, Eddie Jobson on keyboard, Ruth Underwood on percussion and synthesizer, Patrick O’Hearn on bass and vocals and David Samuels on timpani and vibes. The brass section featured Randy Brecker on trumpet and Michael Brecker on tenor saxophone, Lou Marini on alto sax, Ronnie Cuber on baritone sax and Tom Malone on trombone. The sets included such faves as “Dinah-Moe Humm,” “The Purple Lagoon,” and “Cruisin’ For Burgers.”

The Zappa In New York 40th anniversary editions are available for pre-order now and all digital pre-orders will receive an instant grat download of the unreleased rarity “The Purple Lagoon/Any Kind of Pain.”