CLASSIC 1978 BROADCAST FROM GERMANY S THEN DIVIDED CITY After falling out with his long-time manager Herb Cohen, Frank Zappa spent much of the late 1970s in a legal battle with Cohen and later with Warner Brothers too. With the majority of his own recorded material thus tied up, Zappa concentrated on touring with a small, rock-oriented band. March 1978 witnessed the release of Zappa In New York, recorded live with a 13-strong band at the Palladium in late December 1976. Demonstrating in equal measure Zappa s extraordinary ability as a composer and fearless approach to controversial topics, the record reached a respectable No. 57 on the Billboard chart. Two standout numbers from In New York, Titties & Beer and The Black Page , would be a fixture of Zappa sets by the time his 1978 European tour rolled around, as the concert featured on this two CD set can attest. Recorded at Berlin s Deutschlandhalle on 15th February that year, broadcast live across Germany and synced too in the US, Zappa performs a wide array of material spanning his entire career, including material that would appear on his upcoming 1979 releases , Sheik Yerbouti and Joe s Garage.
