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).