Zappa/Erie is a live album by Frank Zappa, released posthumously on June 17, 2022. The album is a six CD boxset consisting of several shows performed in the Erie, Pennsylvania area in 1974 and 1976. All the material is previously unreleased, except for roughly ten minutes of audio that appeared on Roxy & Elsewhere (1974) in an edited form.[1][2]
The first two discs contain a full show from the "10 Years of Mothers" tour from the spring of 1974.[3] The touring band had much of the same lineup as The Roxy performances of 1973, with members Walt Fowler, Don Preston, and Jeff Simmons, and without percussionist Ruth Underwood, who was busy elsewhere at the time. Recorded at Edinboro State College, Pennsylvania, the setlist contains many reworked versions of tracks from 1960s era Mothers of Invention, from albums Freak Out!, We're Only in It for the Money, and Weasels Ripped My Flesh, as well as songs that were performed throughout 1973 and 1974.
The third disc contains two tracks recorded four days later in South Bend, Indiana. The rest of the third disc and all of the fourth contain a full show performed at the Gannon Auditorium in Erie, on November 12, 1974. The six piece band toured throughout the summer and fall, and appear on other recordings from that era including the Helsinki Concert on You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 2 (1988), and A Token of His Extreme (2013).
The fifth and sixth discs mostly contain an Erie show recorded two years later, on November 12, 1976 at the Erie County Fieldhouse, with select tracks from the surrounding dates in Toledo, Ohio, and Montreal, Quebec. This band toured throughout the fall of 1976, and was the first tour to feature Patrick O'Hearn on bass and Ray White on vocals and guitar. The band also featured "Lady" Bianca Oden during her brief stint on vocals and keyboards before she had to leave the group, and appears on the Vaulternative Records release Philly '76 (2009).
CD 6: Live From Erie, PA - 11-12-1976 (cont'd) [track 12 recorded Montreal, QC, Canada - November 10, 1976, tracks 13-14 recorded Toledo, OH - November 13, 1976]
