10 career-altering third albums from bands in the 1960s and '70s

WE’RE ONLY IN IT FOR THE MONEY by The Mothers of Invention (1968)

Frank Zappa’s third album took dead aim at hippie culture. On his “ode” to San Francisco “Who Needs the Peace Corps,” he proclaims “I’m hippy and I’m trippy, I’m a gypsy on my own – I’ll stay a week and get the crabs and take a bus back home – I’m really just a phony but forgive me cause I’m stoned…”

Later, he repurposes The Leaves and Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Joe” as “Flower Punk.” “Hey punk, where you going with those beads around your neck? – I’m going to the shrink so he can help me be a nervous wreck.”

Nineteen “tracks,” half of which run under 90 seconds, and some which serve as prototypes for the skits that would come to populate hip hop albums twenty-five years later...For the Money was a more coherent concept album than Zappa’s first two. It hit number 30 on the album charts – the Mothers’ highest charting album until their crest in the mid-1970s.

As he would do throughout the rest of his prolific career, Zappa proved you could use satire and experimentation on an album that had at least some popular appeal. On the album notes, one of his bandmates is credited with “mumbled weirdness,” while another is simply listed as “retired.”