Frank Zappa - 1977 - Sporthalle, Cologne, Germany.

Recorded on 1977-02-06 - at The Sporthalle, Cologne, Germany. Frank Zappa’s Band, November 1976 - February 1977 : Frank Zappa, Ray White, Patrick O’Hearn, Terry Bozzio, Eddie Jobson. Setlist: 00:00 The Purple Lagoon 02:43 Peaches En Regalia 05:57 The Torture Never Stops 17:02 Big Leg Emma 19:00 City of Tiny Lights 29:29 A Pound For A Brown 40:41 Jones Crusher 43:21 My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama 46:50 Tryin’ To Grow A Chin 50:58 Broken Hearts Are For Assholes [Parts on L] 56:30 Dong Work For Yuda 59:33 Manx Needs Women 1:01:01 Titties ’n Beer 1:07:45 Black Napkins Total time: min. Notes: This show had been on the tracker for the past 10 years, in a version transferred and seeded by Jaypfunk. The seed needed to be updated because, apart from the name files, it did not run at the correct speed. There was another version of this show that had previously been seeded by Walk, which ran at close to the correct speed and sounded very similar. After careful analysis, we decided to go on and fix Jay’s version, because it sounded a bit more natural and was completely raw. However, a small fragment of Walk’s version was used at the very beginning of the tape, in order to replace a fade in. It looks like both copied derived from a later edited copy of the master: this suspicion is given by the fact that both sides end exactly after the end of the last note of the song performed. I guess that the original master tape probably had a bit of Frank’s acappella solo after “Jones Crusher“, which is entirely missing here. Unless a longer copy surfaces, we can only speculate. There are small drop outs near the end of side B of the tape which, unfortunately, appeared on both copies and could not be fixed. I think Early 1977 is an interesting tour, as bar FZ, the line-up consists of three of my musical heroes (O’Hearn, Bozzio and Jobson) and my favorite Zappa singer. This show is quite a solid one, with some good stuff happening on “The Torture Never Stops“, “City of Tiny Lights“, “Pound For A Brown“ and “Black Napkins“. This show does not necessarily contain musical extravaganzas (though the “Black Napkins“ is pretty impressive), but there are no dull moments and it’s a throughly enjoyable performance with very decent sound. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the shortest concerts of the tour because some jackass threw a bottle on stage at the end of “Black Napkins“, leading to Zappa refusing to perform the encores. Still, the main set is a good performance and the sound is nice, so it’s a recommended listen. zappateers - December 2015 Seeded to = 21st April 2021.