Telepathic Surgery

The Flaming Lips

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 1, 1993)
• Original Release Date: 1989
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Restless Records
• ASIN: B000003BGD
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #227,812 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It surprised me hardcore, October 30, 2005

By	Ben Hodges (Atlanta) - See all my reviews

My whole life, people have always told me and reviews have always declared that the lips' early stuff was "trite" "inaccessible" "ridiculous" "the acid that acid eats" "impossible to listen to" ETC.

All during this time, I owned everything from Priest to present (with the present changing and new albums purchased as time went along). I never really liked Priest (I know THAT stepped on some toes) and figured that all these people were right about early lips stuff.

WHATEVER. I went out on a limb and downloaded a few songs off of this record to see if it was worth finding a place to buy it from. I downloaded "Begs and Achin'" "Chrome Plated Suicide" and "Drug Machine in Heaven."

I ordered the record in a matter of hours.

This record rawks, let no one deceive you. Priest and HtDitFH are steps down from this, though I enjoy the latter greatly. This record is raw, yet polished, insane, yet almost beautiful. It's nearly impossible to describe. It's noise, it's insanity, it's friggin' awesome. Nothing gets me up in the morning easier that "Drug Machine in Heaven" and it just gets better as the record goes on.

Easily half of the tracks on this record are instant classics.

Don't buy into carping reviews about this record. This album rules. And rules good and hard.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wild Album, Best of the Early Years!, April 12, 2003

By	"happy_nightmare_baby" (USA) - See all my reviews

Not nearly as brilliant as Priest Driven Ambulance, but definatly a wild, heavy album. This is probably the bands best 80's album (although Oh My Gawd!!! comes quite close to earning that title). No Lips collection is complete without it. Hell's Angel's Cracker Factory is worth the price of admission alone!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars That's heavy, dude!, April 24, 2002

By	Scuzzbopper (Pottstown, PA United States) - See all my reviews

The Lips continued their spaced-out journey with their 3rd album, Telepathic Surgery, in 1989. Next to Oh My Gawd!, this is definately one of the weirdest Lips albums. The cover is also priceless: a man standing in front of a barren field, holding a hubcap to his face.
The stand-out tracks include:
1. the brief but strange "Spontaneous Combustion Of John" and "Shaved Gorilla"

2. the hilarious "UFO Story" where Wayne tells the band about his encounters with UFOs as a kid, complete with a beautiful piano ballad stuck right in the middle.

3. "Chrome-Plated Suicide", which deserved to be a chart-topper

4. The 25-minute plus epic "Hell's Angel's Cracker Factory", which contains endless guitar and drum solos, backwards vocal samples, an opera singer, motorcycles revving, an answering machine, tape loops, and more. Worth the price of the CD alone. It also never appeared on the vinyl or cassette version, and never even was released as a single!

If you're looking to dive into the world of the Lips, here's a good place to start. Buy it, as Wayne would sing, "Right noooooooooooooooooooooooooooow!" :-)