The Frank Zappa Vault team is celebrating Halloween with a second collection of rare “Barfko-Swill” merch. The new “Zappaween” features three products: a circa-1981 live DVD, a rare orange graphic tee, and a Halloween costume box set still in original packaging.
An Evening With Frank Zappa During Which…The Torture Never Stops was filmed at the Hollywood Palladium on October 31, 1981. The T-shirt, an orange short-sleeve, has “Zappaween” emblazoned in two different spaces with “The Torture Never Stop” written on the back. The rare item, depicting Zappa’s favorite holiday, has no exact match online.
Finally, a Halloween 77 set draws back even further—pre-1980s, that is—into Zappaween’s history. Barfko-Swills inventory of Halloween 77 sets only contains those numbered 100 and below in a 5000-unit manufacturing run. That means the box—still in its original packaging and complete with a mask, a plastic Baby Snakes-outfit body, and six discs of music recorded at The Palladium from October 28th through October 31st, 1977—is one of the last remaining representations of Zappa’s first-ever costume box.
In September, “Barfko-Swill” rolled out its inaugural collection of rare goods, to celebrate the 50th-anniversary re-release of Zappa’s seminal 1974 record Apostrophe (‘), his first RIAA Certified Gold album. Newly remastered by Bernie Grundman, the reissue compiles session outtakes, bonus tracks, live concert recordings, and a 1974 Quadraphonic mix of the record that hasn’t been in print for 50 years. Items featured in the initial collection included a 1974 Apostrophe (‘) promo LP, a “Don’t Mess With Me I’m A Registered Voter” t-shirt, a “Zappa As President” t-shirt and much more.
“This new old stock has been hidden away for decades and will now be made available once again… until it sells out,” a statement at the time read. “Expect fun stuff & utterly paper trinkety identity boosters such as shirts, out-of-print limited edition records, stickers, posters, and whatever else we managed to salvage.”
