Frank Zappa is one of the greatest musical geniuses of the twentieth century.

Although his over-the-top personality (the quintessential 1960s "freak") often drove him to indulge excessively, squander precious ideas and resources on infantile satire, and treat each record like a comedy sketch, Zappa was nevertheless the first to formulate a vision of "total" music: one without genre boundaries, in which the modern elements of rock, jazz, and classical could converge. In this sense, Frank Zappa was the definitive composer of the twentieth century; one who could utilize and synthesize everything the century had produced.

His masterpieces are realisations of that vision. His bold, complex suites for small orchestras have been recognised by jazz and classical critics alike as works of absolute value. No other musician of the 20th Century has managed to gain approval from such far ranging spheres: from the jazz critics of “DownBeat” to classical composers such as Boulez, to rock music crowds.

Ironically, the more the years go on, the more Zappa seems destined to be forgotten by the world of rock (on which he left just a tenuous mark) and to be remembered instead only in jazz and classical communities. Few progressive rock groups ever attempted to emulate his orchestral exploits and avantguard experiments. The majority of the rock consuming public remembers Zappa as a puerile satirist, a singer of ironic kitsch, and a terribly boring guitarist. The avant garde composer of We’re Only In It For The Money and Lumpy Gravy, the jazz musician of Uncle Meat and Burnt Weeny Sandwich, and even the author of the rock operetta Absolutely Free, were quickly eclipsed in the rock industry. Zappa earned his oblivion with his excessive output., recording an inordinate volume of music; a vice that, to future generations of independent musicians, will sadly remain his most evident legacy.

In reality, Zappa invented a bit of everything, from new wave (We’re Only In It) to rock operetta (Absolutely Free), from progressive rock (Uncle Meat) to the concept album (Freak Out) , to punk rock (Absolutely Free). Many of his inventions (Lumpy Gravy, Weasels Ripped My Flesh) still don’t have a name, because the rock musician capable of following up these ideas has yet to be born.

Frank Vincent Zappa, of Greek-Sicilian origins, was born in 1940 in Maryland, and at the age of ten moved with his family to the edge of California’s Mojave Desert. He grew up in the area and graduated from Antelope Valley High School in 1958.

From a young age Zappa was prolific. He learned to play the drums at twelve, composed his first chamber piece at fourteen, learned guitar by fifteen (his role model: bluesman Johnny Guitar Watson) and ultimately fell in love with rhythm and blues. His formative musical education took place in the ranks of a school band called the Blackouts, which was one of the first multi-ethnic groups (three blacks, two Mexicans, two whites). With the Blackouts, Zappa performed the kind of black music that fascinated him. As for an academic education in music theory, all he had to speak of was six months of college in 1959.

To make ends meet the young Frank Zappa played in bars, produced scores for commercials on local television (his very first recording dates back to 1962), and composed soundtracks for B-movies, including "The World's Greatest Sinner" (1962) and "Run Home Slow". In 1962 he also appeared on a television variety show, performing a "concerto for bicycle".

With the proceeds of his multifarious activities, Zappa was able to support the band that had emerged from the Blackouts, which from time to time was restructured and changed names. Their repertoire still favored african american genres, but leaned more towards doo-wop with grand melodies rather than the drawn out rhythms of blues. He also managed to open a studio in Cucamonga, which became the base for his recording activity (and where he cut his first 45 rpm).

Lured by the money, he even agreed to record a pornographic audio tape and as a consequence, caught in the act by the local police, he ended up spending ten days in jail. To pay the bail of the girl involved in the tape, he and Ray Collins wrote the doo-wop tune Memories Of El Monte and sold it to the Penguins. Cucamonga (Del-Fi) collects the singles that Zappa wrote for others in those formative years (1962-64).

Among the friends of the young Frank Zappa, one of the most notable was Donald Van Vliet , with whom he recorded as early as 1958. The real turning point was when Zappa came into contact with the Soul Giants, a group that featured Ray Collins, Roy Estrada and Jimmy Carl Black. Zappa joined the Soul Giants in 1964 and the group would gradually evolve until (with the three original leaders of the Soul Giants, guitarist Elliot Ingber of the Magic Band, and Zappa on guitar) it changed its name to Mothers Of Invention.

In 1966 the Mothers of Invention booked a gig at Hollywood’s Whiskey A Go-Go where they met manager Herb Cohen and talent scout Carl Orestes Franzoni. Cohen put on Los Angeles' first “freak out” show, named the Great Underground Arts Masked Ball and Orgy (or GUAMBO for short), which took place later that summer, while Franzoni recruited a dance troupe, which would be named the “Mothers’ Auxiliaries”, to act as theatrical support to the Mothers of Invention’s performances.

In June of 1966, their first album, Freak Out (recorded in March), was released on Verve, supposedly produced by the legendary Tom Wilson (Zappa himself was the de facto producer). It was the second double album ever released in the history of rock after Bob Dylan 's Blonde on Blonde, as well as the first ever concept album, as well as the first ever work to be "orchestrated, arranged and conducted" by a rock musician. The record executives’ initial hesitations, understandably fuelled by the band’s wild ideas, had been overcome when Zappa and Cohen demonstrated that this music, while innovative, unusual and aimed predominantly at an audience of wayward intellectuals, was at the same time captivating for its unconventional charm, for its verve and fluidity. The release of the album along with the GUAMBO show attracted the attention of the more perceptive media outlets, sparking controversies of a musical nature (for and against folk-rock) and otherwise (for and against flower-power).

A close examination of Frank Zappa's musical prehistory reveals the initial seeds of the traits that would later come to define him.

His work for tv commercials and amateur exploits in rhythm and blues provided the sonic toolkit that would later become fundamental to his musical vision. His experience composing film scores brought to light two secret aspirations: to be the conductor of an orchestra and to be a filmmaker. The former manifested in his passion for large ensembles, with a full arsenal of strings, winds and percussion; the latter in a morbid fascination with the camera, leading him to draft several film scripts, most of which never came to fruition.

The studio at Cucamonga was the direct precursor to his various record labels: Frank Zappa Music, Bizarre, Straight, Discreet, and Zappa Records; irrefutable proof of his strong entrepreneurial streak, a certain degree of megalomania, and a proud, presumptuous determination to sell his own image and music on his own terms.

Zappa’s interest in the obscene foreshadowed what would become a relentless personal campaign against bourgeois morality., an undercurrent present throughout his records and public statements.
His involvement in the “freak scene” contextualises this agenda of his within a broader critique of American society, and also explains the ironic tone of his lyrics.
The controversy over Zappa's lyrics is due on the one hand to his derision of the flower-power movement, whose ideological ambiguity and fickle nature as a fleeting Californian fad he immediately identified, and on the other to his dismissive attitude towards more direct forms of political action. Zappa rejected the role of protester or ideologue and in return The Movement accused him of making compromises with The System, particularly when it came to the business side. Thus began a love-hate relationship that would fester over time.

The Mother's Auxiliary were an early manifestation of Zappa's vision for live performances. Each song was actually a short theatrical sketch that required an appropriate staging (costumes and action), something halfway between cabaret and a TV commercial. Zappa, like the New York underground, immediately understood the importance of music as performance, but where they turned to art, he turned to parody.

Cohen was the living embodiment of the meticulous organisation behind Zappa’s industry, in spite of the chaotic improvisational anarchy.

The string of small bands founded and dissolved by the young Zappa was the first symptom of a condition that would later consume him entirely: an elephantine output, an inexhaustible compositional drive which was not always matched by inspiration. The official discography would come to represent only a fraction of this manic productivity.
As a result, a thriving bootleg market emerged, stretching over decades, often offering recordings as compelling as those stamped with his official brand.
At every concert, Zappa would unveil tantalising unreleased material; pieces that, for reasons never fully explained (perhaps simply to avoid oversaturating the market), would never become official records (and yet the official records have always been numerous and frequent).

A passion for the music of Edgar Varese was the most significant thread running through his youth. His gallegiance to the inventor of noise music and ironic critic of the early industrial age forms the basis of Zappa’s concept of “total art”. Equally important are the techniques of superimposing multiple melodic lines, and in general the chaotic symphonism of Charles Ives. As Zappa himself once said “My work includes every possible means of visual communication: the awareness of those involved (audience included), all perceptual deficiencies, God, the Big Note (the raw material of universal architecture), and more. Ours is a special art, in a space denied to dreamers.”

“Freak Out!” borrows as its title a term from 1960s West Coast counterculture slang referring to a radical break from conventional norms, often through creative or psychedelic expression, and, according to Zappa’s own liner notes, “a process whereby an individual casts off outmoded and restricting standards of thinking, dress and social etiquette in order to express CREATIVELY his relationship to his immediate environment and the social structure as a whole”. All this is illustrated with a wealth of literary gags on the album’s sleeve. This established a tradition that would consolidate over time: that of communicating with fans scattered around the world through cover notes, updating them on the line-up, emotional state and unusual goings on of the band.
The album is overtly psychedelic, but in reality Zappa had little or nothing to do with psychedelia. While in San Francisco people were indulging in LSD orgies before entering the studio, unlike many of his peers, Zappa composed with clarity and sobriety. He wasn’t a drugged-out hippie, but rather a sociologist observing the hippie phenomenon from above, recognizing its positive impact on artistic creativity. The record was born more from his passion for the funambulist inventiveness of Dadaism—the same impulse that inspired figures like Edgar Varèse and John Cage.
The instruments used are simple and commonplace, and all in all the principles of sonic entertainment are upheld for a good hour, with confident mastery of guitar and vocal harmonies. Zappa disruption of traditional consumer melody begins with the exaggeration, to the point of exasperation, of the most trivial elements; the crumbling choruses taken a bit from doo-wop and a bit from beat (Ray Collins' vocals are perhaps the most distinctive trait of Zappa's parodic style, especially when they are counterpointed by the band leader's repellent, cavernous, fecal grunts), lyrics of a dim-witted middle-schooler or a commercial jingle. And yet it all triumphs through a kind of deviant genius, in an eccentric whirlwind of sound, in a perfect tightrope walk that leads from one theme to its opposite without stumbles, discontinuities or harmonic fractures, with an absurd coherence that only madmen and geniuses posses.

Dadaism is surpassed by the extended tracks of the second disc: Help I'm A Rock and Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet. Here the abstract collage remodels an entire musical civilization. Snippets of rock, light orchestra, noise, speeches, commercials, operetta arias, high-school kitsch (those hiccupy songs for vapid schoolchildren), folk, blues, jazz, and two decades of rhythms are swallowed up in a single seamless piece, an immense sonic black hole.

On the one hand, Zappa maintained a purely artistic view of his collage work: composition, according to him, was the art of gathering, accumulating, stockpiling disparate elements. Even the packaging itself was part of the artwork, indeed giving it meaning. On the other hand, he claimed to make music that was not political but sociological: the whole thing, music and everything else, is a pretext to capture the attention of the public and force it to listen to the message as well ("therapeutic shock"), following an idea belonging to medieval jesters that had reached, via Brecht, the artistic avant-gardes of the 60s.

At this point a typical Zappa technique begins to emerge: fusing musical stereotypes with satirical and  surreal lyrics delivered through brief, comical spoken interludes (sonic gags). The piece as a whole is a kind of rock operetta, a continuum of tiny musical- sketches (pop-vaudeville).

Zappa’s role is thus a mix of composer, conductor, and producer. As a composer, he prepares the themes to be used, regardless of  whether they are his or borrowed, and establishes the transitions and interludes. As a conductor, he selects the musicians needed to perform the piece (that is, he scales the orchestra) and takes charge of the direction of the performance. Finally, as a producer, he uses the recording studio as an additional and far more powerful instrument. Zappa himself admitted that his music required specialized technicians rather than brilliant instrumentalists. He allowed inventiveness and lack of discipline only to himself. From everyone else, he demanded absolute, blind obedience.
Rigor and synthesis reveal in Zappa a composer of European lineage. His artistic trajectory would always play out under both the light and shadow of the contradictions of being a European Californian.
Freak Out is the first attempt in which all these solutions are sketched out. It is not yet a mature work, but rather a notebook filled with observations yet to be developed. Zappa conducts his studies on melody, harmony, rhythm, dissonance, lyrics, and instrumentation, excelling in all subjects, and being the first to conceive these basic building blocks of music as entities that must converge simultaneously.

The bohemian wit of Freak Out is also the first musical transposition of the Pop Art of Rosenquist, Warhol, Dine, and co. In the same way that Warhol attacks the stereotypes of consumer society and the myths of celebrity, so Zappa desecrates the clichés of commercial music. The operetta-style parodies (with Ray Collins’s extraordinary soprano imitations) are not, then, displays of gratuitous Dada nihilism. At the other end of the album lie the experiments in sound montage, musical landscapes ruled by total anarchy, which can always be traced back to the Pop Art manipulations of everyday objects (Rosenquist’s multilayered slides, Segal’s anonymous statues, Oldenburg’s distorted utensils). It is the everyday reality of mass American life: the oppressive metropolis, the anonymity of the individual, the relentless pounding of the mass media.
As for the tracks on the first side, the rhymes sung by the Mothers flow fast and smoothly over a composite instrumental structure that at times parodies commercials (I Ain’t Got No Heart, Motherly Love), at times imitates Broadway’s orchestras and choruses (How Could I Be Such A Fool, with a heartfelt trumpet riff, You Didn’t Try To Call Me), at times mimics doo-wop (Go Cry On Somebody Else’s Shoulder), and at times mocks radio vocal groups (Any Way The Wind Blows, a satire of Dylan). Trouble Every Day, dedicated to the Watts riots, is a seven-minute talkin’-blues monologue that pokes fun at protest singers, with a hopelessly offbeat harmonica. In these perfect parodies of stereotypical styles, Zappa hams it up without restraint, emboldened by a scathing sense of humor like few others in the history of American comedy.

Formal perfection is reached on the two masterpieces in the kind of baroque and surreal style that would become one of Zappa’s specialities: Wowie Zowie, a vaudeville ditty with tambourine and xylophone, and  You’re Probably Wondering Why I’m Here, with an epic attack of guitar, grunting “yeah”s, a kazoo filling the role of a trombone, a brain dead chorus and dumb little refrain.
The two sides of this first disc can be considered one long suite in several movements, the theme of which is the stupidity of consumer society, teeming with short but sharp guitar solos, sound effects, cuts, noises, idiotic vocalizations, changes of rhythm, and kiddie refrains. Where Zappa takes this ideology of dissection to its illogical conclusion is in the sudden vortex of Who Are the Brain Police, a psychedelic hematoma in a network of melodic lacerations and sonic contusions. For their part, the small orchestra and the chorus of Hungry Freaks Daddy (with a riff that imitates Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones) are the archetype of the symphonic contamination (classical orchestra/light orchestra) that would cement the composer’s reputation.

The bite of a music that attacks the bubblegum pop of adolescents, melodic beat, white rock and roll and all the serious and commercial repertoire of musical civilization, indiscriminate of era, artistic value and ethnicity, has an explicit political purpose. The critique of the youth culture is a critique of the consumerist/capitalist/imperialist/racist society of Amerika, and vice versa. Zappa sees the new generations as the most faithful and disciplined soldiers of this regime, or, in other words, he sees them as products of mass industry.
This mixture of genius and idiocy would remain Zappa’s hallmark. His music would always essentially be a form of masquerade.
This debut double album has the explicit goal of ridiculing all music that came before it. It is, in fact, a revolutionary manifesto, though not a programmatic one; rather a manifesto of direct sabotage. The musical rebirth begins with the annihilation of the past and present.
Of course, the potion contains a healthy dose of psychedelic yeast: the “high” is permanent. However, the fundamental component of the album is undoubtedly Zappa's prodigious ability to compose songs, worthy of the great songwriters of Tin Pan Alley. An innate ear for melody allows him to pump out tunes in an endless stream. It is precisely this prodigious productivity that then allows him the luxury of murdering dozens of would-be classics. I Ain’t Got No Heart, How Could I Be Such A Fool, Wowie Zowie, and You’re Probably Wondering Why I’m Here could all have become a pop standard. All in a hurry, the work unfolds like an absurd funhouse ride. Zappa deliberately juxtaposes elements that are grotesquely incompatible, for example in the tones that are at times epic and dramatic, languid and pressing, petulant and imposing, but systematically out of place. It's a true theater of the absurd, with all those pipsqueak voices and booming baritones scattered on the stage in mad period costumes to rain down nonsense on the audience that fills the room.
Moving on to the second part, Help I'm A Rock is Zappa's first psychoanalytic nightmare. It opens with an oriental dirge, a muezzin's invocation, nonsense verses, like a multitude of laments in all the languages ​​of the world that speaking without understanding each other, supported by an obsessive and vaguely Caribbean monotonous pulse, in a half-madhouse half-jungle Babel. Suddenly you are shanghaied into a sort of virgin forest, complete with the sounds of animals and a female orgasm in the foreground. After a brief interlude of cool piano jazz we reach the finale: a chamber piece for vocal quartet at that pushes the limit of the most daring of vocal experiments (high and low voices, tape loops, swinging finger snaps, mouth noises, distorted and neurotic countermelodies).
The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet is a twelve-minute ballet that opens with the enigmatic figure of Suzy Creemcheese, a faceless spectre that will wander through Zappa's records for years to come. The Ritual Dance (the first movement) is a wild, orgiastic rite with a strong jungle percussiveness, from which jazz piano clusters, radio interference and vocal noises emerge. The magical sabbath degenerates into sinister chants and handclaps, the rhythm accelerates, the voices overlap dementedly, the tape emits unintelligible groans; bells, animal sounds and orgasm re-emerge from the subconscious. The greatest tribal dance of all time (and archetype of disco-music) stops in the second movement of the sacrilegious ceremony, the Nullis Pretii , in which a group of psychopaths, gargling in the throes of orgasm, hint at a grotesque a cappella chant of the ghost Suzy’s name: as if summoned from the other world, a petulant little voice of a child witch appears, in a grand finale that is a shapeshifting sketch of blunders on the piano and percussion.
The monster that roams Zappa's metaphysical jungle (the natural setting for his comic-social sagas of imaginary sadistic-libertine heroes like Suzy Creemcheese) is the old world (musical/political), which Zappa himself is preparing to lobotomize on the surgical bed of his (recording) operating room, just as the wicked goblins of the virgin forest are doing on the other coast. At the same time, The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet also seems to be an accurate musical representation of the effects of LSD.
A work of incalculable influence, Freak Out puts the song form of rock music through a total mutation, altering each of its constituent elements (chorus, arrangement, rhythm and lyrics), bringing rock music closer to pop art (the record is a disordered accumulation of semantic signs of consumer society) and to the anarchic fantasy of Dadaism.

Zappa brought his show on tour and received standing ovations, particularly at New York's Garrick Theatre, where the audience went wild over his orgy of anti-militarist parodies.

Zappa had already prepared the sequel, Absolutely Free (November 1966), which was released in May 1967 on Verve. The Mothers Of Invention boasted a remarkable extended lineup, the only one of the era (and one of the few of all time) to have pop entertainers, jazz improvisers and classical musicians share a stage: Ray Collins (vocals), Roy Estrada (bass), Jim Black (drums and trumpet), Don Preston (keyboards), Bunk Gardner (saxophone), Billy Mundi (percussion).
During the triumphant Greenwich Village residency, Zappa's signature greeting "Hello pigs of America!" had been coined, and it is with this that Zappa opens the album. It was also accompanied by a booklet of lyrics that, bypassing the censors (who had tampered with the sung parts of the record to make them incomprehensible), Zappa sent to those who requested (and paid for) it: everything, as always, was explained on the cover.

The record is a distillation of the ideas on Freak Out, made with greater compositional maturity and a broader palette instrumentation, launching the crucial collaboration with jazz trained musicians (the title itself can be interpreted as a jab at the free-jazz scene).

Absolutely Free opens with two famous programmatic manifesto-overtures: Plastic People, a vaudeville satire on consumerism, with a final frenzy of percussion and speech, and The Duke Of Prunes , a sequence of musical themes, some operatic, some song-like and with sudden rhythmic hysteria. The instrumental Invocation and Ritual Dance of the Young Pumpkin closes out the first side and gives in to the overt temptation that was teased in the first two pieces: a purely instrumental theme, with tribal rhythm, guitar solos and improvisation of wind instruments and keyboards.
The second side is formed of a singular suite: a bitter, wry celebration of the "plastic civilization", the album’s explicit target. It is a sequence of miniature themes that overlap in a way that is fluid and without disconnection despite sudden changes in rhythm and instrumentation. The guiding element is the voice, or, more often, the choir, while the music underscores and reinforces. The suite begins with America Drinks, featuring dissonances of piano in a jazz rhythm, which transforms via a circus-like interlude in the absurd refrain of Status Back Baby, one of his wildest tracks (with jazz clarinet solo, driving instrumental progressions and a whistle), then the bar-room chorus of Uncle Bernie's Farm crashes in, with tinkling vibraphone and a bluesy cadence, and we are immediately in the "yeah-yeah" beat of Son Of Suzy Creamcheese .

The masterpiece is Brown Shoes Don't Make It, an operetta in the form of a collage that distills the album’s narrative frenzy. In this song (which mocks the bigoted moralism of the American bourgeoisie by poking fun of naughty little girls and stern guardians of social decorum) Zappa draws on all his musical knowledge, from film scores to the avant-garde, from musichall to nursery rhymes, from Brechtian cabaret to village bands, from orchestral easy-listening to ragtime, from romantic crooners to swing, from country to Native American dances, from free-jazz to nightclub ballads. The farce is conducted by a grotesque alternation of deep low voices and hysterical high pitched ones. The song’s flow is seamless even though it changes personality every two seconds. Brown Shoes is an encyclopedic summa that seems like a high school prank, and will remain the key to understanding Zappa's work. This suite actually has the lurid tones of a horror show, complete with gruesome scenes of sex and violence (“Smother that girl in chocolate syrup" proclaims the upstanding father).
The album’s closer is named with the slogan America Drinks And Goes Home, a bitter parable on societal folly, with the background noise of a department store bustling with hurried shoppers and cash registers gobbling up money, while cocktail lounge piano and relaxed crooning accompany the ceremony like a funeral band. The album therefore ends in a manner that is falsely comedic, and actually rather melancholic: a tribute to mass consumerism and the triumph of capitalism.
The fundamental theme of the album is the absurdity of modern American life. And it is fitting that Zappa uses absurd music to represent a socially absurd world.

The carefree carousel of Freak Out has become a painstakingly constructed superstructure. The stylistic opulence and the unbridled verve of the execution constitute a significant advance. Zappa also demonstrates an admirable capacity for synthesis that, unfortunately, will soon fail him.
Absolutely Free was conceived as a rock operetta, complete with stage design and libretto. This narrative-musical form is not only the ideal medium for conveying his caustic parody of American society, but is itself an allegory of that society, and Zappa ironizes the very form he is using to ironize American society, effectively lampooning it two-for-one.

The level of instrumental proficiency within the band improved with each album in parallel with the leader's increasingly complex musical ambitions. During the recording of the third album, We're Only In It For The Money (August and September 1967; but the orchestral segments had already been recorded in February) released in March 1968, the Mothers' added to their roster multi-instrumentalist Ian Underwood, a classically trained prodigy on both keyboards and wind instruments.
The album was dedicated to the Beatles (the title, cover and notes parodied the multi-million dollar Sgt Pepper’s) but in spirit it retained the characteristics of the previous one: above all the parodic collage structure. Although this time round an arsenal of studio tricks was employed with even greater guile and technical mastery. The work is broken down into brief fragments averaging a couple of minutes in duration each, and glued together without interruption. It’s the counterpoint to the compactness of Absolutely Free: here the sound is fractured into minute pieces, each completely self-contained and at the same time an integral part of the whole.
The listener is attacked by a horde of tiny intelligent units that pursue with subtle ferocity a very precise plot: a frieze of a sordid and inhuman society, hopelessly lost in the labyrinth of hypocrisy, stupidity, insensitivity. The choral theater of Concentration Moon and the tragic lament of Mom And Dad express a pessimism about the future of the "American way of life" that is reflected in the typical themes of imprisonment and suffocation. The moral landscape of the Nation is atrociously depicted in a series of surreal episodes: a rag, a piano overture, a commercial tune, and the most famous aria of the opera, What's The Ugliest Part Of Your Body, an introduction to Absolutely Free, a piece of classical music with harpsichord, which launches into a memorable psychedelic refrain. Then comes Flower Punk, a frenetic beat that, like the previous one, satirizes the flower-power fad of Frisco. Both are tragicomic hymns to freedom, where the most cynical sarcasm mixes with universal pity: "you'll be absolutely free only if you want to be" is the pressing Brechtian slogan.
The barrage of noise on Nasal Retentive Calliope Music acts as an overture for a parade of oddball characters; a desperate, grotesque revision of Desolation Row for adolescent suburban California (with all the voices electronically distorted and sped-up) including the ex-schoolmates of the goliardic ditty Let's Make The Water Turn Black and the Idiot Bastard Son of the eponymous funereal caricature-lament.
The freak-humanist anthem in Mother People, one of Zappa’s greatest vaudeville numbers, identifies  his fans as the fortunate survivors of a massacre, and is the only positive note in the bleak nihilism of this album. The grand finale of The Chrome Plated Megaphone Of Destiny , a cacophonous avant-garde piece that fuses Varese, Cage and Zappa and culminates in an exercise in processed laughter, resulting in a horrendous premonition of the shape of technological society to come.
We're Only In It thus reveals a tragic essence that lies beneath its relentless veneer of humor. It is a heartfelt cry of pain for the decadence of civilization, now reduced to a slave of consumption and conventions, incapable of recovering even a semblance of humanity. From the depths of nihilism, Zappa raises his caustic funeral song, a bitter portrait of the adult bourgeoisie and a tender lament for the youth (the current victims of society and future tormentors themselves).
The continuous stream of songs and gags can be divided into some thematic blocks, identified by a leading piece: the je accuse against adult society of Concentration Moon , the satire of hippie fantasies on Absolutely Free, the elegy to the martyr Idiot Bastard Son, the to freaks of Mother People and the apocalyptic mini-symphony of Chrome Plated Megaphone . Through this linear progression, Zappa presents his thesis on contemporary society.
If instrumental freedom was the major revelation of Absolutely Free, noise is the salient discovery of We're Only In It For The Money. Whereas the first perfected the collective aspect of music, the second chisels the technical aspect of production. Supremely slick, the recording allows the buzzing swarm of studio tricks to take center stage after it had remained a background element on the previous album. The amateur pastiches of Help I'm A Rock and Monster Magnet have matured into the sophisticated composition Chrome Plated Megaphone.
The number of references made on the album is staggering, monstrous and immense. We're Only In It For The Money represents the pinnacle of Zappa's montage technique, worthy of the Soviet filmmakers of the 20s and Brecht himself. He is the intellectual counterpart to the naive idealism of Sgt. Pepper. Pop-songs, chaos à la Varese, riffs of all sorts, white noise, spoken sections, bubbling electronics, absurd nonsense, classical passages, psychedelia, pop-horror skits: the arsenal is complete.
We're Only In It is the third part of the great psychedelic trilogy which, as a whole, constitutes an artistic monument with which it is difficult to find equals in the twentieth century.

Zappa was now famous and was beginning to be respected, if not quite embraced, by the musical establishment. Between the chaos of 1967 and the beginning of 1968, he wanted to pursue two indulgences, One was a long-standing dream. The other, a kind of provocation. He wanted to record a piece with a real orchestra. And, at the same time, he wanted to make a record that might actually chart (something radio DJs couldn’t ignore).
For the first objective he gathered about fifty musicians, including of course his Mothers, under the banner of the "Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Symphony Orchestra & Chorus" and composed for them (October 1967; but the orchestral parts had already been recorded in the winter) a ballet entitled Lumpy Gravy (record released by Verve in May 1968), keeping the role of orchestra conductor for himself.
Much less serious was the other idea, recorded at the end of 1967 and partly in February of the following year. Ruben And The Jets, released by Bizarre at the end of 1968, was a collection of songs in the most perfectly typical doo-wop style of the 50s, a light music so well imitated as to fool the unwary. But beyond being the umpteenth proof of Zappa's multifaceted genius, able to inhabit other styles so fully that he made them seem effortless, the album has no artistic value.
With Lumpy Gravy, Zappa attempted his own version of symphonic rock. But unlike his English contemporaries, who turned to conservatory orchestras for legitimacy, Zappa built a bespoke one of his own. He recruited expert players, who came not from classical traditions, but from jazz (for wind instruments and percussion) and rock (for guitars): tight rhythm sections, agile horns, improvisers rather than readers.
The ballet was born of the same mosaic of low culture and subcultural debris that had underpinned Zappa’s work from the beginning, and what set it apart from the previous masterpieces was the lack of separation grooves between one piece and the next.
The orchestra was underused and its contributions middling. The bulk of the work is the product of Zappa’s inner circle of trusted studio musicians. All in all the orchestral ambitions were at odds with Zappa’s collagistic music, and the result lacks the urgency and bite of his earlier works. It replaced compression with sprawl. The ideas weren’t sharpened; they were diluted.
The best moments are in the first four minutes, when a tarantella merges with a Morricone-esque soundtrack to launch into fluid jazz and a series of variations on the main theme.
A brief, cryptic dialogue and a scattershot sequence of high-caliber interludes - a vicious hard-rock riff, supersonic dixieland, an aggressive synth ostinato. Then come more variations: swing, circus, country, deliberate dissonance. Another dialogue. A manic blues harmonica. Then a burst of pure noise.
In the second part, the listener is left waiting for exactly fourteen minutes of useless confusion before Zappa arrives at a moment of clarity: a very happy variation (for a beach band and Japanese singer) of his early tune Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance (already recorded in 1961 and which later also appeared on We're Only In It). Overall, however, the suite is stretched out and only in a few places does it take off with the right crackling sequence of gags. Weighed down by too much speaking and not enough singing it becomes invasive and cloying, the monologues and dialogues slow down the carousel and break the rhythm.
Lumpy Gravy seems to mark a shift. The end of the psychedelic collage era of the great debut trilogy, and the beginning of something yet more abstract.
Zappa, in the meantime, was already moving beyond the studio. In that same year, he launched two record labels and began a strange kind of private welfare state for the marginalized artists of Los Angeles. He offered platforms to the Girls Together Outrageously, to the deranged street performer Wildman Fischer, to the discarded Alice Cooper, and to his old friend and rival, Captain Beefheart, now stranded on the outer reaches of the industry.
The products of Zappa’s supervision of these artists are certainly interesting (perhaps more interesting than the actual merits of their own authors).

The fundamental work that would bridge the collage period to a band-oriented phase was Uncle Meat, a double album recorded partly in October 1967 and partly in February 1968, with the subsequent addition of percussion overdubs. Released by Bizarre in April 1969, it was originally conceived as the soundtrack to an underground film that was never made. It stands out as Zappa’s most scientific and complete work. Like its predecessor, the album is largely instrumental, though it does not disdain to breaks into a few nursery rhyme-like vocal forays. The production is immaculate (an enormous step forward from the Verve releases) and the material is organized and catalogued according to a unitary conceptual structure in contrast with the patchwork approach of earlier records. The band was at its peak (one of the most spectacular rock ensembles of all times). Underwood now had the chance to dominate over the rest, both on electric keyboards and saxophone, while the presence of Collins, by this point a living relic of the parodism that once was, had begun to fade.

The fundamental form of the album is the “variation”. The main themes appear multiple times across the record; each time, the basic refrain is repeated with a variety of instruments in chain like procession.The first Uncle Meat track is classical, lasting two minutes, and features the same phrase interpreted by a parade-band xylophone, an Arabic clarinet, and a solo harpsichord. The second version (ignoring three smaller tracks which, in spite of their misleading titles, also use the same motif) runs five minutes and offers further variations on the same theme: in tone, rhythm, instrumentation (keyboards, winds, percussion, and strings), and even ethnicity, A Japanese soprano suddenly cuts in), sweeping in breakneck speed across an immense gamut of lead instruments and interpretive possibilities, (when in reality the underlying score consists of just a few notes repeated ad libitum). It is a multi-stage virtuosity of orchestration and editing, and it quietly proposes a different way of “composing” music where the score itself is besides the point; an extension and exaggeration of a widely practiced jazz technique.
The grotesque and brilliant culmination of this concept is King Kong, a multiform celebration of the Hollywood monster, which applies the same principles to an open structure (allowing improvisation) with a denser framework where all the many polyglot instruments of the ensemble can intermix, passing the lead role from one to another: from the moans of Estrada’s bass to Preston’s liquid piano splashes, from the guttural convulsions of Underwood’s sax to the shrill reverberations of his electric keys, from the strident crackling of Gardner’s electric sax to his pyrotechnic evolutions on clarinet, ending with a moment of psych-ward trumpet atonality, all while the rhythm section imposes a dizzying, obsessive pace to this relay of instruments (which is to say, to Zappa’s overdub).
The prelude (three minutes) and variations (six, for a total of seventeen minutes: an entire side of the record) open a major chapter in Zappa’s career. Finally, after a failed attempt in Lumpy Gravy, the dream of directing a custom ensemble is realised. The right scale for his orchestral vision turns out to be the band: a cross between a rock group, chamber ensemble, jazz orchestra, and (why not?) village band. King Kong, in all its multiplicitous forms (as mentioned, the theme is taken up several times through different lenses: classical, swing, clownish etc), is the manifesto of “total” music.
Another category of pieces important for the purposes of this “total” music is represented by the purely instrumental pieces with “technological” subjects; each one, in its own way, a caricature of mechanised society. The boldest of atonalities are mixed with the cheapest of kitsch, creating an endless variety of colours and “voices”. Particularly effective are the “Varesian” polyrhythmic disorder of Nine Types of Industrial Pollution, featuring one of the best guitar solos, and the relentless finale of Project X, with winds and keyboards percussion.
The masterpieces are Dog Breath, launched at a demented pace from the most famous belch in music history, and itself also built around a seemingly infinite series of variations on a theme: solfeggio, operata soprano, Collins’ falsetto, sped-up voice from the street, manic wind instruments and overdubbed keyboards, a park-band, an Indian clarinet; and Electric Aunt Jemima, the ultimate nonsense ditty for Collins’ nasal falsetto. To these we can add the solemn and extravagant Mr. Green Genes, another classic theme, and The Air, an archetype of doo-wop. The sound here reaches new heights of clarity, order, and control. Impeccable, meticulous, exilerating; the apex of Zappa’s scientific anachronism. With these gems, the Mothers affirm themselves as the greatest vocal group of all time (Zappa on bass, Collins and Estrada on treble).
Jimmy Carl Black is a supersonic drummer, worthy of the great jazz players, but above all it’s Art Tripp’s array of noise that brings colour to the rhythms. Underwood enchants with the electronic timbres of his organ, at times neurotic, at times beachy, and with his wide range of keyboards (harpsichord, celeste, electric piano). He and Gardner constitute one of the most inventive wind sections in music, again for their quality and variety of timbres. Altogether, the group functions as a machine of creative arrangement.
Filler tracks, seemingly superfluous minutia (like the scandalous Louie Louie performance at the Royal Albert Hall) pop out from one side to the next. Just as the rambling interludes (dialogues or monologues) rage between tracks (inevitably Suzy Creamcheese makes an appearance) alongside instrumental sketches (We Can Shoot You’s ornithological clarinet, for instance) little one-minute jokes with no words. The humour is discreet and more cerebral, very different from the crude, sardonic street humour of the psychedelic trilogy. The moralistic jester gives way to a metaphysical heretic, indulging in autobiographical confessions, psychoanalytic sessions, tongue-twisters, even poetry.
In the end, Uncle Meat marks the Mothers’ growth into a fully formed instrumental ensemble. It confirms the leader’s talent as an arranger, conductor, and modern composer. And it completes the acquisition of jazz know-how.

Frank Zappa has by this point already completed a significant arc in the history of American music. His music is fully in the tradition of the bourgeois culture of the New World, which in the twentieth century has differentiated itself from both European bourgeois culture and American proletarian (or sub-proletarian) culture. It is a culture that, from a musical point of view, has fed on Italian tenors, Salvation Army bands, television and radio commercials, film soundtracks, "high school", black vocal quartets, Broadway musicals, jazz big bands. The contrast between this musical culture and that of the European bourgeoisie, nourished on classics (Bach, Beethoven, Romantics) and "songs", is very clear. And it is equally evident that Zappa grew up outside of the "low" American culture: country, blues, rock and roll (all genres born in the poor suburbs or in the countryside) are dialects known only through “hearsay”, and rarely appear in his swoons.
Zappa establishes himself as the most important figure in American music since the time of Ives, whose work he continues and updates, wryly bypassing the Cagean exhibitionism (which in fact belongs more to European culture).

This is Zappa’s most fertile season, in which the composer and his ensemble embellish the fusion of rock, jazz and classical. 1970 is a year packed with important albums. Zappa reshuffles and renames his band the Hot Rats (the album of the same name was recorded in July and August 1969 and released in October of the same year on Bizarre). Weasels Ripped My Flesh (released on Bizarre in august 1970) collects surreal and avantguard concert material from the Mothers that was recorded over a period of time from late 1967 to september of 1969. Most notably, in 1969 Zappa writes the material for Jean-Luc Ponty’s album titled King Kong (released on Pacific).
The Hot Rats were a temporary formation, but a gathering of big names nonetheless: Captain Beefheart (disappointing on Willie The Pimp), the violinists Ponty and Don Sugarcane Harris, Underwood, and a very respectable rhythm section. The album is a collection of studio sessions, during which the group’s lineup is reformed continuously.
Zappa’s harmonic virtuosity shines through even on the smallest songs; touches of great class from the master of ceremonies that manage to build small masterpieces of narcissism over very insubstantial textures. The instrumental pieces of Uncle Meat have been refined and moulded into an elegance that is even more rational. The catchiest, Peaches En Regalia, is also yet another exercise in “variation” ad infinitum (rhythmic, timbric, and instrumental) of the same theme).
The long group exercises are more ambitious extensions of this premise. The Gumbo Variations, blistering performances first by Underwood on sax, then Harris on violin (with a dizzying and demonic finale), begin to expand the concept of “variation”, giving ample space for the unbridled improvisers, thereby constituting a dress rehearsal for Little House I Used To Live In. The sound is dense, flowing and smooth. The solos overlap naturally at great pace. In Son of Mr. Green Genes Zappa has a chance to deploy the full arsenal of his formidable and frenzied band-ism, giving himself, on guitar, the lion’s share (Heavy metal plus Free jazz?).

Weasels Ripped My Flesh documents the period of 1967 and 1968, with the Mothers at the height of their jazz period. Live they even allow themselves a few more liberties, to the point that the Mothers seem like a neurasthenic version of the Art Ensemble Of Chicago. The performances range chaotically from the frenzy of King Kong to schizoid sax solos, from the most neurotic swing to dissonant piano, with an insistent and farcical recourse to solos. Zappa indulges in the most capricious hybrids, such as the limpid orchestral watercolor of Toads Of The Short Forest, in itself a legacy of Uncle Meat, which degenerates into tribal-rhythmic roars and disconnected sax moans, and the mangling boogie cadence of Orange County Lumber Truck. Some of Zappa's most surreal experiments appear here: the memorable laughter solo in Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Sexually Aroused Gas Mask, the dissonant earthquake of the title track, the electro-surreal slapstick of Dwarf Nebula, the clownish jazz of Didja Get Any Onya (a tour de force by Gardner).
Eric Dolphy's Memorial Barbecue towers over everything , seven minutes of informal "bandism" at a languid pace, embellished with disjointed soliloquies on sax and clarinet. Weasels is experimental music for a surreal circus, when an abominable misunderstanding sends free jazz into the fray.

The Jean-Luc Ponty album is the crowning achievement of Zappa’s ambitions as a Jazz composer. The players of the album are, apart from Ponty himself, the pianist George Duke and the ever-present Underwood, flanked by about ten jazz musicians of the latest generation. What is interesting about the record is not so much the jazz reinterpretation of some classics from the Zappa repertoire but rather the twenty minutes of Music for Electric Violin and Low Budget Orchestra, composed by Zappa and conducted by Underwood. Compared to the historical predecessor of Lumpy Gravy there is a huge leap in quality, both in terms of orchestral awareness as well as maturity and balance of composition.
Abandoning classical ambitions and the bad habit of bloating suites with jokes, the music flows in an essential and unhindered way. The inventions follow one another unhurriedly, carefully weighed and fully utilised. Saxophone and violin embroider a flowing and lush style. Jazz, caged in the solid structures of Zappa’s total music, can venture into dangerous cartilages of experimentation that are absorbed without imbalance.
The result is of great artistic importance. The piece represents the apogee of the band-oriented period (along with Little House). Beyond any superficial comparisons, Music For… goes further than Stravinsky’s ballets, Varese’s chamber pieces, and Stockhausen’s electronic suites, while referencing all of them, and it marks an important conquest of Western musical civilization.
The unleashed and eccentric Zappa demonstrates here a good surprising judgement and clarity. The sound is compact and linear. The theme is organized organically from the initial mannered fauve along the transformations of the lead instrument up to the demonic finale on the notes of Brown Shoes Don’t Make It, along the way seamlessly absorbing Arabic melodies, bossanova, blocks of dissonance, jazz improvisations, “barbaric” Bartók-like elements, as well as the inevitable self-quotation (Dog Breath as a Slavic-fairy tale style).

Confirmation of these skills comes just a few months later with a bootleg titled 200 Motels, recorded at the Pavillon in Hollywood in 1969, in which Frank Zappa conducts the Philharmonic and Zubin Mehta conducts the Mothers.

And yet, in October of that year, Zappa disbands the Mothers, due to his own megalomania rather than to any lack of success. Posthumously released on Bizarre in 1970, their final brilliant album, Burnt Weeny Sandwich (recorded during the same period of time as Weasels Ripped My Flesh), is a long instrumental journey across the landscapes of an unrestrained imagination. It has no programmatic ambitions and makes no attempt at definitive arrangements, but instead finds the spontaneity and grace of true genius.
The first side is dominated by Holiday in Berlin and the titular theme: two instrumental suites punctuated by a flurry of variations and episodic miniatures, in the style of Uncle Meat. These two central pieces hover halfway between Uncle Meat’s experimentation and kitsch, and Hot Rats’ intricate, verbose band-like arrangements. The atmosphere of Holiday in Berlin is especially pompous and caricatured (with a typical whirlwind of a thousand rapid transformations) fusing kitsch with circus motifs to lend a disorienting cheerfulness to the multifaceted instrumental sequence. Burnt Weeny Sandwich, meanwhile, brings back Zappa’s verbose proto-heavy guitar work, set within a more ramshackle rhythmic framework.
On the second side, the twenty two minutes of Little House I Used to Live In reign, with Don Preston on the Piano and Sugarcane Harris on violin. It is one of the three great instrumental pieces of the period, along with King Kong and Music For Low Budget Orchestra, anticipated in the Gumbo Variations session. After a lyrical piano introduction and a frenetic orchestral saraband (in which the Archie Shepp-style wind riff, Zappa's devastating guitar solos and Underwood's waves of keyboard stand out), the violin enters with a drawn out blues that grows in progression, pained and visceral, contorting and spasming it surges and distends into a long delirium underscored by a superb piano accompaniment by Preston, who little by little begins to take over and ramble exotically and swingingly; the return of the violin, brimming with tension and at frenetic pace, ends in gasps of acute agony; a sort of rowdy orchestral meltdown dominates the second part, which consists of a of whirling guitar solo and a final climax on the keyboards, hissing like accordions or carillons spun around at breakneck speed (masterpiece and swan song of Underwood, the one man orchestra). A tour de force of four great soloists (Harris, Preston, Underwood and Zappa) and of the rhythm section (the double drums of Tripp and Black), a masterpiece of stylistic perfection, but above all a perfect “team game” set up by the captain.
Among other things, this album exudes an expressionistic mood that adds to Zappa’s catalogue of revisitations. The taste for the grotesque and clownish (and the great suite is intercut with lines of circus "bandism"), the same strident contradiction between exuberant joy and melancholic solitude (rendered in all its inhuman anguish by the solos) create a dark, turbid and oppressive atmosphere.

The building of the Mother's collapses in on itself shortly thereafter. Zappa is forced to rebuild the group around Duke, Underwood, Ainsley Dunbar (drums), and welcomes the two frontmen of the Turtles (Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman). Zappa seems overwhelmed with the general collapse of his generation, and opts for an honest professionalism without pretense.

Chunga's Revenge (Bizarre, 1970) also includes among other things, a small variety of creative gags, including the humorous Sharleena (recorded in June) and the instrumentals Transylvania Boogie and Chunga's Revenge (both recorded in March).
 More difficult to defend is 200 Motels (recorded in January and February of 1971, and released in October on United Artists), an ambitious and monumental soundtrack to the film of the same name, that should have consecrated the artist, and which instead floundered in a sea of comic novelty songs. The painful decline of the artist is also evident in the live recordings, from which only the ballet Billy The Mountain (on Just Another Band from LA, recorded August 1971 and released on Bizarre the following March) stands out.

This creative crisis comes to an end when Waka/Jawaka (recorded in April and May 1972) proposes a curious hybrid of Lumpy Gravy, Miles Davis, and the Grateful Dead. Released two months later on Bizarre, the album is built around studio jam sessions, like Hot Rats and features excellent instrumentalists such as Preston, Duke, and Dunbar. The title track and Big Swifty revive the splendor of the full band pieces. The first comes out somewhat tedious, but Big Swifty constitutes the latest logical continuation of the "total music" discourse that had been abruptly abandoned following Little House. The expansive brass arrangements have a tendency towards jazz, which gushes from every pore, somewhat getting in the way of Zappa's inventiveness. Big Swifty actually has the appearance of a typical jazz piece, conducted through the soloists' improvisations around a pre-established theme. While acknowledging the great class of the performers and the impeccable "direction" of Zappa, this is music for parks crowded with resting freaks, quiet and relaxing music, without those jolting changes of rhythm and instrumentation that continually broke down the barriers of harmony in Music For Low Budget Orchestra and the like.
 The album includes a couple of funny gags, one blues (Your Mouth) and one country (It Just Might Be A One-Shot Deal).

Recorded at the same time as Waka/Jawaka, Grand Wazoo (Bizarre, November 1972), a work entirely for small orchestra (about twenty musicians), consisting of five medium-weight tracks, is even better. Cletus Awreetus-Awrightus, dedicated to a phantom emperor of funk, plays the part of Peaches En Regalia; the "Wakajawakian" jam Blessed Relief is cradled by wind instruments and pianos in a nocturnal jazz; the sleepy For Calvin is a kind of slow-motion dimwit's theme. Even more than Big Swifty, the title-track of Grand Wazoo marks the return to notable standards of performance. The material, fluid and homogeneous, perhaps lacks the expressive heights of the past, but the continuous overlapping of themes (30s big band, blues-rock, bebop, a prehistoric cornet, flamenco) is textbook. The whole album is pieced together with extreme care, the sound flows clear and round, the arrangement is impeccable from all points of view; the craft and class brilliantly make up for any creative failure.

Sadly this amounts only to a brief parenthesis. Zappa promptly disbands the orchestra and returns to squandering his talent (and that of his collaborators) on throwaway pop songs. Overnite Sensation (Discreet, 1973; recorded in March and June) and Apostrophe (Discreet, 1974), which collect sessions from a period between 1972 and 1974, are just laxkluster albums of commercial music. A few tracks could be worth saving on the basis of their higher comic impact (Dinah Moe Humm) or greater fidelity to the past styles (Uncle Remus), but musically there's no excuse. Don't Eat The Yellow Snow and Cosmic Debris flirt with classic blues rock. The return to vocal-centric format proves to be as anachronistic as it is unfortunate.

Roxy and Elsewhere (Discreet, 1974), which collects live sessions from 1973 and 1974, at least boasts a few truly memorable songs. When he's not yapping to the audience, Zappa dishes out instrumental hailstorms and tumultuous rhythms (Cheepnis, Don't You Ever Wash That Thing?, both recorded December 1973) which revive that gritty satire of his early work. The long Be Bop Tango (from the same session) even sketches out a high-class jazz comedy-trombone number that harks back to the atmospheres of Grand Wazoo.

One Size Fits All (DiscReet, 1975), recorded partly in December 1974 and partly in April 1975, contains Inca Roads and boasts an impeccable sound. The odd song is worth a listen, such as those to celebrate the reconciliation with Beefheart, Bongo Fury (Discreet, 1975), which collects recordings from January and May 1975, in particular Debra Kadabra, recorded in the second session. Also respectable is Zoot Allures (Warner Bros, 1976; the sessions date back to June), an album of unusual (for him) guitar blues-rock, but Torture Never Stops , Mr Pinky and Disco Boy are pale copies of the satires of the past.

The downward trajectory is undeniable: having passed through the kitsch-rock stages of Freak Out , the kitsch-jazz-rock of Hot Rats , the total music (kitsch, jazz, rock and avant-garde) of Music For Low Budget Orchestra , Zappa has regressed, through the kitsch-jazz-rock of Grand Wazoo and the kitsch and roll of the last period.
It is no coincidence that Zappa remained silent after Zoot Allures for a year and a half, the longest silence of his career.

Zappa actually had his redemption work ready, but it would remain unreleased for nearly twenty years. Läther (Rykodisc, 1996) was originally meant to be a four-LP set, gathering the most ambitious compositions from those years. Completed in 1977, it was butchered by record executives, who instead chose to extract four separate albums from it, those from the "orchestral" period (the sessions span from September 1972 to February 1977). Even in its tampered form, these albums present Zappa’s easy-listening side in a more dignified way than the little songs of the same period had.

Some of that music appears on the self-produced double live album In New York . Recorded in the last few days of 1976 and released in March 1978, the record features the legendary lineup of Patrick O'Hearn, Terry Bozzio, Ray White, Eddie Jobson and five wind instruments. But the opportunity is a bit wasted, despite Purple Lagoon .

Studio Tan (Discreet, 1978) contains the mini-rock opera entitled Greggary Peccary (January 1975), which tells the story of the pleasant misadventures of a Yankee pig. The satirical occasion benefits from a solid humorous-musical structure, overflowing with kitsch-and-roll and effervescent tricks, despite some moments of tiredness and the incorrigible vice of that tedious narrative voice. More important, however, are the instrumental pieces: Redunzl (December 1974), a timbric exercise with jazz inspiration (a Grand Wazoo with the moods of Uncle Meat), and Revised Music For Guitar And Low Budget Orchestra (January and February 1975; the orchestral parts were recorded in September), a revision of the masterpiece of Ponty's album. The masterly work of orchestration, of the dosing of strings and wind instruments, and of composition, with the casual passages from daring chamber music to tacky easy-listening, as well as the impeccable choral performance, place this "studio accident" among the highest moments of Zappa's art.

Sleep Dirt (Discreet, 1978) is a collection of unusual solutions to Zappa's algebra, fanciful dissertations by a luxury entertainer who draws from the most diverse sources: the subdued guitar ravings of Filthy Habits (the prototype of many cloying solos on the instrument, recorded in June 1976), the danceable andante of Regyptian Strut (a lackluster Peaches En Regalia recorded in December 1974), the capricious funk of The Ocean Is The Ultimate Solution (recorded in 1976).

Orchestral Favourites (released by Discreet in May 1979, although recorded much earlier, in September 1975) is the most extravagant collection of the three, a group of futile oddities and whimsical experiments by Zappa the conductor, small relics of the most ragtag orchestral society in history: the sentimental revision of the theme from 200 Motels, Strictly Genteel (martial and almost funereal, epic and grotesquely serious, punctuated by small "Ives-ian" chaos, exuberant, opulent, laughing "bandism", farcical parody of Morricone's soundtracks, one of Zappa's most solemn gaffes), the intrusion into the contemporary area of ​​Pedro's Dowry (a free minimalist dissonant atonal rarefaction with clownish episodes of the trumpet and trombone), and the ingenious elephantism of Bogus Pomp, a delirium instrumental that sweeps away the serious musical twentieth century but which ultimately degenerates into a series of military/rustic/circus marches, a colourful fresco that welds together official culture and folklore, the science of sound and goliardic illiteracy.

The ten-disc History and Collected Improvisations of Frank Zappa is the most faithful testament to the artist’s creative life during the years of decline, with the addition of juicy historical artifacts from the early 1960s. The showcases confirm the underlying schizophrenia of his art: the dualism between kitsch jokes and pyrotechnic "bandism".

Zappa himself feels at a certain point the need to bring some order to this chaotic and dispersive period. The result is one of the most confusing discographic periods…

In 1979 alone, Zappa released a self-produced double album, Sheik Yerbouti , which collected recordings from 1977 and 1978, and a triple album, also self-produced, the rock opera Joe's Garage (recorded between April and June 1979). These albums are full of pleasant moments, updated to the styles of fashion (and above all to the new standards of production), but they are certainly not brilliant. The conductor goes back to singing and playing the guitar again; since 1968 he has struggled to pull off both roles simultaneously.

Social critique, artistic indulgence, music hall parody, hard rock and farcical nods to fashionable genres become the ingredients in the recipe for Zappa's eternal youth potion. Sheik Yerbouti, with Adrian Belew on guitar and Bozzio and O'Hearn again, boasts hilarious parodies such as Bobby Brown (the breezy '50s), City Of Tiny Lites (urban funk), Flakes (the pathetic Bob Dylan) and another gallery of ridiculous sketches (Jewish Princess, I'm So Cute, Dancing Fool). The sketches are edited to perfection and are as good as the classics of the early years. Wild Love still has a few moments of orchestral genius. But the endless guitar solos (Yo Mama) are instead the negative novelty of the album, the (long feared) transformation of Zappa from composer/conductor to hollow instrumentalist, a role in which, in addition to having much more gifted rivals, he proves to be much less brilliant.

The hero of Joe's Garage , a rock opera set in a future where playing music is forbidden, is a guitarist in prison, one of the many victims of the Central Scrutinizer. The usual repertoire of vocal gags and instrumental boldness, plus a polished sound, and great craftsmanship, make it easy to digest the epic ballad of Joe's Garage (triggered by a doo-wop chorus and rockabilly interludes), the sarcastic lament of Catholic Girls (male backing vocals with interventions by the perverse schoolgirl of the moment), the strut of Stick It Out , the surf choruses of Dong Work For Yuda , the dreamy lament of Watermelon In Easter Day , and the almost punk anger of Packard Goose . The grand finale of A Little Green Rosetta is a spectral callback to America Drinks And Goes Home that closed Absolutely Free, branded with a cheerful confusion and a crowd hopelessly swept up in the System.

The instruments are updated to the times (and so the instrumentalists, all of the new generation, and so the plundered genres, to which reggae, disco and punk have gradually been added) allowing for the production of a work that’s dignified and at the same time accessible. But beyond the "professional" update, Joe's Garage adds little to the Zappa’s repertoire.

Tinseltown Rebellion (Barking Pumpkin, 1981) which collects pieces that are almost all from 1979 and 1980, presents a Zappa exhausted by creative crisis, but still stubbornly holding on. The studio editing shines with that special brilliance that year after year will delay the moment in which the usual caustic ditties (the first three minutes of Easy Meat from April 1980, For The Sophisticate and Bamboozled By Love both from February 1979, and Tinseltown Rebellion from December 1980), the usual instrumental hailstorms (littered with dreadful solos and cloying jokes), the rhythmic switch ups and the falsettos will bring nothing but boredom.

You Are What You Is (Barking Pumpkin, 1981), again a double album, is the first collection of songs (twenty, recorded between July and September 1980) that completely forgoes the extended suite. If nothing else, the lyrics (taking aim at televangelists and politicians) are the most biting of the period. Zappa also finally makes good on an old ambition, one he hadn’t yet had the means to fully realize: the amateurish tape collages of his early years have here become sophisticated studio techniques that give the music a much stronger sense of presence.
The Theme From The Third Movement Of Sinister Footwear is of little note as a Zappa instrumental, but the core of the album is the standard song format, which he reworks top to bottom. Harder Than Your Husband is a parody of country music. Society Pages is a snarling boogie; Conehead is a sketch turned nursery rhyme. Teenage Wind draws on TV commercials and the music hall, Goblin Girl is sung in choral unison over reggae rhythms with cartoonish sound effects, Doreen fuses doo-wop with heavy-metal guitar riffs.
There is, in fact, a suite of sorts: You Are What You Is, a relentless funk-blues with passionate soul-style vocals, serves as the overture to a sequence of songs that collectively satirize religious scams, stringing together slogans like The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing and Heavenly Bank Account, all in a wildly eclectic shuffle of reggae, country, gospel, and rap.
It wraps up in style with the loping boogie of Suicide Chump; Jumbo Go Away, a near-perfect blend of melody, riffs, instrumental gags, and warped vocal effects; the lovingly crafted Doors pastiche of If Only She Woulda; and the heroic-comic apotheosis of Drafted Again, one of Zappa’s best comic rhymes: a mini rock-operetta showcasing his full vocal arsenal (witty counterpoint, dumb-girl voice, gargling sounds, 78-RPM laughter, mock-solemn choir, and Indian war whoops).
Despite its status as a “lighter” album, You Are What You Is is a parade of of hilarious songs, impeccably produced, in which Zappa’s craft and class converge.

As contributions to Zappa’s encyclopedic fresco of American society, an ongoing hobby for the rock-pensioner, the albums of this period constitute merely amusing additions rather than extravagant centerpieces. With the patience of a collector, semi-serious devotion and maniacal assiduity, Zappa enjoys fitting new blocks into the giant puzzle of his "comedie humaine", an endless cinematic snapshot of American archetypes, a chronicle of adolescent behaviour and cultures.

Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch , which contains live sessions from late 1981 and studio recordings from early 1982, is a self-produced album; released in 1982, it contains the hit Valley Girl, a parody-manifesto-anthem of the new LA teenager of the 80s, Teen-age Prostitute, a hilarious operatic sketch for vulgar soprano, and finally Drowning Witch, yet another potpourri of genres, rhythms, instrumental ricochets in one of his favourite forms: the ballet suite.

The Man From Utopia (Barking Pumpkin, 1983), which collects material recorded between 1981 and 1982, follows shortly thereafter, with another polyrhythmic instrumental (Tiny Walks Amok), an impassioned rhythm and blues à la Ruben and the Jets (The Man From Utopia) and another witty piece of social satire (Cocaine Decisions).

Them Or Us (Barking Pumpkin, 1984), another double album, gathers a dozen-odd equally long-winded and slapdash songs recorded in the early 80s. But even Ya Hozna (a driving electric boogie with hallucinatory dialogues of distorted voices) and Truck Driver Divorce are marred by tedious, mile long guitar solos (Steve Vai and Zappa himself), from which only the chant-like gags Baby Take Your Teeth Out, In France, Be In My Video and Frogs With Dirty Lips manage to escape. Thanks to the sterile production, these take on an even more surreal flavor and stand out (especially the first) as some of the most effective tracks of the last ten years. Steve Vai dominates on the two suites: Marqueson’s Chicken and Sinister Footwear.

Thing-Fish (recorded 1982-1984) is a tedious self-produced musical comedy released in 1984.

Unfortunately, his perverse guitar megalomania often got the better of him. The verbose trilogy Shut Up and Play Your Guitar (Barking Pumpkin, 1981), consisting mostly of material from 1979 and 1980, generally collects instrumental pieces of questionable taste—though it does include a duet, Canard Du Jour (1973), between Zappa on bouzouki and Jean-Luc Ponty on baritone violin.

The planned six double volumes of You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore (starting in 1988), released by Rykodisc, faithfully document Zappa’s exuberant live activity, featuring yet more gag songs on contemporary topics (such as Elvis Has Just Left the Building, from 1988).

Two albums tied to current events follow. Meets The Mothers Of Prevention (Barking Pumpkin, 1985) is a satire of the censorship advocates that were in vogue that year. The album is of worthy of note for being Zappa's first attempt at the synclavier (One Man One Vote  Little Beige Sambo) and for the suite Porn Wars (september 1985), a futurist collage of "found vocals".

Broadway The Hard Way (Rykodisc, 1989) is a live album that collects recordings from the period February-June 1988. The songs attack the protagonists of American politics. Here too Zappa experiments with new production techniques, in particular digital sampling.
The album is the first of a trilogy that will immortalize his 1988 tour and the spectacular lineup of that year (drummer Chad Wackerman, bassist Scott Thunes, percussionist Ed Mann, keyboardist Bobby Martin, guitarists Mike Keneally and Ike Willis, plus trumpet, trombone, clarinet, saxophone), the other two (both doubles) being The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life (Barking Pumpkin, 1991), recorded in the same period), which contains many grotesque covers and the jazz jam Let's Move To Cleveland, and Make A Jazz Noise Here (Barking Pumpkin, 1981), contemporary with the other two, which instead focuses on instrumental jams (but a lot of the material is old).

Zappa is in the midst of a second decline.  What stands out from this time is, above all, the production of his records: crystalline, technological, and intricately crafted. Zappa’s arrangements foreground his cavernous voice and glittering guitar, but what truly shine are the many layers of accompanying sonic events.

Beat The Boots (Foo-EEE, 1992) is a series of eight "legal" bootlegs.

Zappa returned to orchestral music in grand style, first to conduct the Chamber Players at the Memorial Opera House as a commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Webern and Varese; then he recorded a disc with the 107 members of the London Symphony and finally had his music conducted by the great French conductor Pierre Boulez.

The album with Boulez, The Perfect Stranger (self-produced, 1984), gathers seven orchestral pieces, including Dupree’s Paradise (January 1984), transcribed for orchestra and two pianos, which reveals never fully dormant Stravinskian roots; The Perfect Stranger (from the same session), a perfect fusion of film-noir soundtrack and late-Romantic descriptivism; and above all Jonestown (February and April 1984), a piece of Stockhausen-like dissonance whose apocalyptic suspense marks one of Zappa’s experimental peaks, forging a musical idiom that brushes the absolute.
Zappa displays a childlike curiosity for the timbres of the orchestra: every instrument must contribute at least one dramatic gesture, especially the lesser-used ones (harp, clarinet, tuba, violins). At the same time, his imagination ranges from the light theme of Outside Now Again (same session) to the madcap Varèse-style piece The Girl in the Magnesium Dress (same session).

In 1983, Zappa began releasing a series of volumes simply titled Zappa. The first includes four works performed by the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of avant-garde conductor Kent Nagano. Zappa had made the leap to become a ‘serious’ composer, staying discreetly behind the scenes while leaving it to the orchestra to make sense of his scores. As always, the pieces are highly theatrical and bombastic—out of step with contemporary avant-garde trends. But they possess the imagination and sentimentality that define masterpieces beyond the boundaries of critical standards. And what’s more, they’re fun (the jovial spirit of his early days is still very much alive).
Mo 'N Herb's Vacation (January 1983), in three movements, the ruffian "bandism" of Grand Wazoo flows into a serious complex symphonism: the first movement is a gaggle of clarinets playing sometimes in harmony, sometimes in dissonance, sometimes in chorus, sometimes freely; the second opens with the menacing sounds of the string section, with the violins spreading an atmosphere of suspense, rising and falling in unison, remaining “aloft” on very long notes, a buzz violated by brief incoherent sounds (convulsive percussion, nervously pizzicato strings); the winds burst in pompous and disorderly, like car horns in rush hour, and the movement concludes with a cluster of disconnected phrases from individual instruments; the third, which begins at a fast tempo, very percussive and dissonant, is the most varied movement and rich in episodes, which are generally dialogues between a solo instrument (clarinet, drums, trombone) and the rest of the orchestra. Disjointed fragmented, lacking melodic lines, effective ideas, and the joy of the band chemistry, the work perhaps marks the end of Zappa’s long carefree adolescence.

The second volume of recordings with the London Symphony would later be released in 1987 and contained Bogus Pomp (from Orchestral Favourites in a more ethereal and funereal version, also recorded January 1983), Strictly Genteel (the finale of 200 Motels, in a baroque-sentimental version), and Bob In Dragon, a narrative ballet.

Jazz From Hell (self-produced, 1986) offers a taste of instrumental fusion, with an eight-piece combo that "gets" the leader's synclavier. The album leverages the lucid and brilliant sound that Zappa had developed in those years on bold experiments like While You Were Art, where rhythm and melody are suspended in a lush form of chamber music, where a tumult of disjointed chords crumbles in the electric chaos of an almost aleatory atonal sequence. Night School has the picturesque charm of the total overtures of the past. Damp Ankles and especially G-Spot Tornado are dissonant mini-symphonies that play mainly on dizzying percussion effects. The gags are of course not left behind (Beltway Bandits, with tropical and oriental flavors).

At the dawn of the third decade of his career, Zappa was still firmly in control. He conducted a ragtag orchestra around the world, entrusting it with the most abstruse and extemporaneous scores, and tormented audiences with verbose yet flashy guitar solos.

Unfortunately, as his orchestral skill, instrumental mastery, and compositional fertility grew, he found himself set in a calm routine as an eccentric workman of music, a peaceful vacation as an eternal tourist of art, a creative dulling of his positive madness. You really have to take the guitar out of his hands and get him to zip it to hear the most universal music of the century.

Yellow Shark (Barking Pumpkin, 1993) presents previously released material now recorded live with the Ensemble Modern and a dance troupe in September 1992. Everything Is Healing Nicely (UMRK, 2000) is the sequel-prequel of the Ensemble Modern performances, recorded in July 1991. The two discs collect perhaps the definitive versions of many of its classics.

The most brilliant and capricious detractor of modern civilization died on December 4, 1993. But not even the funeral stopped the discographic bombardment.

Civilization Phaze III (self-released, 1994) is a double concept album, played entirely by Zappa himself (the main sessions date back to 1991) on the synclavier. The instrumental pieces are interspersed with dialogues recited inside a piano, causing the strings to resonate (dialogues that had been cut from Lumpy Gravy). The long and complex N-Lite and Beat The Reaper constitute the culmination of Zappa’s research into sound assemblage that had begun with the naive collages of the first records and had blossomed in the all too "lucid" production techniques of commercial records. Here sounds become “instruments" and not just means. Waffenspiel closes the record with a disorienting flurry of sound effects (the effect, upon reflection, of a dying man chaotically capturing the sounds of the street) and bucolic sounds (the sounds he hears in the cemetery?).
With this album, Zappa’s career comes truly to an end.

The Lost Episodes (1996) are rarities and unreleased material.

Have I Offended Someone? (Rykodisc, 1997) is an anthology of some of his most satirical songs (compiled by Zappa himself). Mystery Disc (Rykodisc, 1998) is another collection of rarities.

Finer Moments: Live 1967-1972 (2012) contains rarities including the 20-minute live The Subcutaneous Peril.

Jimmy Carl Black died in october 2008.

Ray Collins died in 2012.