Zappa's second and third studio albums

Zappa's second and third studio albums were landmarks of record production highlighted by liberal use of 'cut-up' editing techniques. Absolutely Free (1967) continued Zappa's lyrical preoccupations with the hypocrisy and conformity of American society, with the alleged suppression of underground and alternative culture. It was followed by the album widely regarded as the peak of the group's late Sixties work, We're Only In It For The Money (1968) which featured some of the most radical audio editing and production yet heard in pop music, and ruthlessly satirized the hippie and flower power phenomena. The cover photo parodied that of The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Lumpy Gravy, 1968
Lumpy Gravy, 1968

This was book-ended by two closely linked companion pieces. The audio collage Lumpy Gravy (1968) — released as a solo album under the name Francis Vincent Zappa[1] — took Zappa's production techniques to a new level and, according to Zappa himself, took nine months to edit. It mixes a multitude of musical styles and orchestra line ups. His next album was a tribute to the doo-wop genre Cruising with Ruben & the Jets (1968).

During the late Sixties, Zappa continued to develop as an artist. He increasingly used tape editing as a compositional tool. A prime example being the double album Uncle Meat (1969), where the track "King Kong" is edited from various studio and live performances. Zappa further evolved a compositional approach — which he dubbed "conceptual continuity" — that ranged across virtually every genre of music. His work combines satirical lyrics and pop melodies with virtuoso instrumental prowess, where long, jazz-inflected improvisational passages are counterbalanced with densely edited and seemingly chaotic collage sequences that mix music, sound effects and snatches of conversation. Conceptual continuity clues are found throughout Zappa's entire oeuvre.

He became famous for regularly quoting musical phrases that influenced or amused him — one of his most famous and regular quotes was the riff from the perennial Sixties rock hit "Louie Louie", which appears in various forms in numerous recordings over the whole span of his career. He also frequently quoted from or referred to TV show themes ("The Untouchables"), from famous rock & pop songs such as "My Sharona," "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?", "Let's Dance," "Whip It," "Owner of a Lonely Heart," and "Stairway To Heaven," and from classical works such as The Rite of Spring, Boléro and The Planets.

In the late 1960s, Zappa began regularly recording his concerts, beginning with a simple two-track portable recorder and eventually progressing to a portable 48-track digital system in 1988. In the process, he built up a vast archive of live recordings. In the late 1980s some of these recordings were collected for the 12-CD set You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore. Because of his insistence on precise tuning and timing in concert, from the 1970s on Zappa was able to augment his studio productions with excerpts from live shows, and vice versa. Later, he would combine recordings of different compositions into new pieces, irrespective of the tempo or meter of the sources. He dubbed this process xenochrony (alien time).

1960s

Among Zappa earliest professional recordings are two scores for the low-budget films The World's Greatest Sinner (1962) and Run Home Slow (1965). In 1963, he began playing professionally around Los Angeles and bought the small Pal Recording Studio in Rancho Cucamonga, California, which included a unique 5-track tape recorder built by Paul Buff. At this time, only a handful of the most expensive commercial studios had multitrack facilities, the industry standard for smaller studios was still mono or two-track. Zappa renamed the studio "Studio Z," moved into it, and began routinely working 12 hours or more per day. This set a pattern that would endure for almost all of his life.

While at "Studio Z", Zappa accepted an offer of $100 to produce a suggestive tape for a customer's stag party. Zappa and a female friend jokingly faked an "erotic" recording. Unfortunately, the customer was an undercover member of the Vice Squad and Zappa was jailed for ten days on charges of supplying pornography. His entrapment and brief imprisonment left a permanent mark, and was a key event in the formation of his anti-authoritarian stance.

After a short career as a professional songwriter — his elegiac "Memories of El Monte" was recorded by Doo-Wop group The Penguins — in 1964 Zappa joined a local R&B band, The Soul Giants, as a guitarist. Soon he assumed leadership, renaming the band "The Mothers." They gradually began to gain attention on the burgeoning Los Angeles underground "freak scene" and in 1965 they were spotted by leading record producer Tom Wilson, who had earned acclaim as the producer for Bob Dylan and Simon & Garfunkel. Wilson was also notable as one of the few African-Americans working as a major label pop producer at this time. Wilson signed The Mothers to the Verve label, which had built up a strong reputation for its modern jazz recordings in the 1940s and 1950s, but was then attempting to diversify into pop and rock, with an "artistic" or "experimental" bent. Verve Records insisted that the band officially re-titled themselves "The Mothers of Invention" because "Mother" was short for "motherfucker" — a term that apart from its profane meanings can denote a skilled musician.[10] Around this time, Zappa also met and signed with longtime manager Herb Cohen.

Begin of the Career

Zappa began his career as musician on drums, and while attending Mission Bay High School, he joined his first band, The Ramblers. Although he performed as a singer and guitarist for most of his later career, Zappa's original influence by classical percussion compositions made him retain a strong interest in rhythm and percussion and his bands have been noted for the excellence of their drummers and percussionists. His works such as "The Black Page" are notorious for virtuosity and complexity in rhythmic structure and arrangement, featuring radical changes of tempo and metre as well as short, densely arranged passages contrasted by free-form breaks and extended improvisations.

Frank Zappa Early Life

Frank Zappa was born in Baltimore, Maryland on December 21, 1940 to Francis Zappa (born in Partinico, Sicily, of Greek and Lebanese descent) and Rose Marie Colimore (who was three quarters Italian including Sicilian and one quarter French descent). He was the oldest of four children (two brothers and a sister). In January of 1951, his family relocated to the West Coast because of Frank's asthma. They settled in Monterey, California, about 100 miles south of San Francisco. Shortly thereafter, they moved to Pomona, then to El Cajon before moving a short distance, once again, to San Diego in the early 1950s. While attending Mission Bay High School, he joined his first band, The Ramblers, as drummer.

About Frank Zappa

Frank Vincent Zappa(December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American composer, guitarist, singer, film director, and satirist. In his more than 30-year long career, Frank Zappa established himself as one of the most prolific and distinctive musician-composer-band leaders of his era. Zappa worked in almost every musical genre and wrote music for rock bands, jazz ensembles, synthesisers and symphony orchestra, as well as radiophonic works constructed from pre-recorded, synthesised or sampled sources. He wrote and recorded hundreds of musical works, spread over almost sixty albums released during his lifetime (plus several posthumous releases). Although he only occasionally achieved major commercial success — his first gold album award was Apostrophe in 1974 — he maintained a highly productive career that encompassed composing, recording, touring, producing and merchandising his own and others' music, as well as many other business and creative activities. He received multiple Grammy nominations and won a Grammy award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance in 1987 for his avant-garde instrumental LP Jazz From Hell. In addition to his music recordings, he created feature-length and short films, music videos, graphic art, album covers.



The text from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Zappa