Customer Reviews

You Think You Really Know Me

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I too grew up with Gary, in fact that's my photo on his cover. The original was black and white and had an eerie feeling about it. However, the Motel folks did a very nice job with the re-issue, some pictures I haven't seen in years.
I can remember sitting around in Gary's and Butch's basement watching Gary recording, mixing on his 4 track...with professional tape of course, you know the $6 buck stuff. Just shows you that you should never give up your dreams, and day job.
I think the success of Gary's music is that while growing up in high school years and those that follow, we all have had experiences that tug on our emotions and have known girls like "Karen", "Cindy" and others...(oh yeah, Cindy was like a mink).
It's probably best Gary never locked up with them because they would have ripped his heart out....but he would have new material for more music.
But back to his CD, bare in mind this was cellar music, in the mid 70's on 4 track tape. Just pure genius for a north sider...

Although it's true that Gary Wilson might not be everyone's cup of tea (especially if you like your pop music on the conventional side), I have long considered this one of the greatest albums ever recorded, brilliant, utterly unique, funny, moving, bizarre, wonderful! (I was lucky enough to buy an original copy when it first came out, and have been singing its praises ever since.) But most of all, "You Think You Really Know Me" is REAL--a totally honest, non-commercial creation from someone making music the way he wanted to, completely from the heart, as opposed to the music-by-committee mediocrity littering the airwaves today.

I am thrilled that "You Think You Really Know Me" has been re-issued, giving a wider audience the chance to experience the artistic singularity that is Gary Wilson, and his unique musical world of mutated jazz-pop, Fender Rhodes electric piano, Farfisa organ, synthesizer melodies and bass lines, fuzz guitar, sophisticated chord changes, bizarre sonic interludes--all coalescing in demented (or tongue-in-cheek? only Gary knows for sure) odes to make out parties, red lips, groovy girls at the beach, Cindy, Linda, Karen...this feeble description does not even begin to convey the full impact of this decidedly unconventional album. You simply have to hear it to get the feeling.

Most people I know absolutely flip over this record when I play it for them--especially musicians--and I can tell you, it is one of the five albums I would take to a desert island were I forced to save only a handful of treasured recordings. Believe it! It is a record I simply HAVE to play again and again at regular intervals--I love this album!

A student in the year 2100 studying the music of the latter part of the 20th century may seek to define our musical culture by an analysis of the top ten, poring over countless music reviews or even tallying song titles with the most remakes. Whichever method is chosen, the sheer volume of the task will overwhelm and - quite possibly - bore the student. The music that was exciting and fresh one day became worn out and superceded the next by something slightly different, but not quite different enough to shock or alienate those unwilling to think about the music they hear. Waves and waves of this. By 2100 this body of music may be completely washed away and irrelevant, survived by just a few outstanding exceptions...

My advice to the 22nd century student is to forget about the mass-produced music and concentrate on the anachronisms, the creative monuments left behind by a few brilliant musicians/bands: Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, The Velvet Underground's Velvet Underground & Nico, and whichever other titles belong in the list, Gary Wilson's You Think You Really Know Me is definitely among them. These will stand. Listening to You Think You Really Know Me, the one thing I do know is that I am hearing art. And what strikes me the most is how personal the lyrics are, more personal and honest than we might even like to be with ourselves. I'd love to read what that student in 2100 writes about Gary Wilson's music, because our contemporary mind set may prevent us from fully understanding today.

Gary and I were very close friends from grade school. And, I have many dear memories. The performances, music, and basement recording sessions provided key elements in my development as a human being. Gary 'touched' everyone who knew him.

My old vinyl copy had a warp from improper storage. I had a cassette copy, but there's nothing like having a CD copy of "You Think You Really Know Me". The memories are fantastic! My two favorite cuts are still "6.4 = Makeout" and "You think you really know me". The lyrics and sound/music blend into a mystical experience.

Gary had a very keen music sense from his earliest age. He was always leading us (our very close-knit group) into new experimental directions; whether it be music or other artistic expression. This recording is the culmination of those experiments and more importantly, a defining moment for Gary's musical expression and an emotional outpouring of his deepest emotions.

Every serious artist must have a copy.

Being the person who found Gary Wilson and reissued this record, this review may come off as biased or self promoting. However, that is not my intent. I felt compelled to write this review in response to Mr. George Hatch's shallow and merciless review. It was a pretty long one and he probably missed a "Friends" rerun in his frenzy to tell everyone exactly how much he hates this record. Hopefully he got it on tape so that his presumably mundane, suburban existence wasn't totally ruined.

To be fair though, I didn't know what to make of this record upon first listen either, but it was fascinating! After listening to it again, I was totally hooked, could not stop playing it and went out of my way to play it to all my musician friends who were also blown away by it. The whole reason we reissued it was to present it to a new audience and blow people's minds. A hard album to describe given its avant garde leanings. The best way to describe it would be "James Brown meets David Lynch's Eraserhead with a ghetto version of Steely Dan as the backing band". I've also heard it described as "Prince on crack" which is also pretty good. The cool thing about the record is the fact that it cannot be easily categorized because it was not made with marketing and promotion in mind. It was the record that Gary Wilson wanted to make in his basement in 1977. A totally alien concept by today's entertainment standards, but then again look at the unlimited amounts of [junk] (hurled at us from every conceivable angle) that's supposed to pass for entertainment these days. To sum it up, "You Think You Really Know Me" is a great album with unforgettable songs. Check it out!

Gary Wilson is his very own universe, and who knows what this guy was up to in the late 1970s exactly, but he produced just one amazing piece of music, and one can sometimes amount to ten, if you dig what I'm saying. Groovy Girls Make Love At The Beach is probably the best track on the album. Gary mixes beautifully complex funk mingled with strange lyrics and a painfully unique vocal deliverly. A very inspirational album and well worth your time.

I remember Gary from around 1972-1976, he was several years older than I was. I always found Gary's music fascinating. Gary was not only a musical pioneer but a great talent as well. When the CD came out a few weeks ago, I just had to get it. What really struck me about it was how far ahead of its time it really was. Remember that the album was recorded years before "new wave" really became popular, so it was kind of ground breaking. In addition the album is very well put together. The bass and drum are so tightly synchronized it's incredible. Another thing that I found was that not only is the album about Gary making a statement, but having fun while he is doing it as well. It's hard to listen to the music and not get caught up in the fun. The fun is kind of infectious and it really grows on you. I must have listened to this CD about 30 or 40 times and I like it just as much now as when I first heard it. Definitely a great album!

An artist friend of mine likes to play rare and obscure tracks to go along with portraiture slideshows that I shoot. When I first heard him play a track off this album in July, 2002, my immediate reaction to the vintage and novelty of the recording was "That must be Brian Protheroe." I was way off. What little Protheroe that this same friend had played for me made an impact for its innovative, non-radio-play character . . . but Gary Wilson sidestepped that altogether. Track 3, "6.4 = Make Out," taps right into the vein of "this could be a dangerous person." Of course, I favor that kind of artist and had to order the CD right away.

The album makes a lot of musical sense, especially given that Wilson seems more of a tyro than anything in 1977. The electronic and acoustic tracks all mix down to a surprising coherence in most of the titles, riding the dial between pop and abstract (tending toward stalking). But here's the big bonus I got: Gary Wilson sounds indisputably like good ol' vocalist P.J. Proby--so much so that I've referenced the reissued Focus recording "FOCUS CON PROBY" as a recommended title. The weird part: both albums are from 1977. I wonder if Wilson ever heard Proby, much less intentionally imitated him and his Touretteseque "HA" and "HUH" utterances throughout his songs. It's creepy and faux funk, yet you also get one of those "It's so bad that it's good" reactions prevailing through both albums, showing that these artists are uninhibited, maybe even tilted toward creative genius. This is echt, Betamax-era, non-mainstream art, whether they opted for that end or not.

There's a little jealousy mixed into all of my favorable newcomer reaction to "You Think You Really Know Me." Here's another late-'70s, NY State home recordist (that's what you did when you lived near the Moog synthesizer factory) who's now rereleasing music on CD. Only Wilson's work isn't just darn innovative for its time, it's a time capsule fusing fusion, proto New Wave and post-adolescent, psychologically suspicious lyrics into a dozen brief tracks. I doubt if any of today's "alternative rock" sissies could dream up even 6.4 seconds of this. . . .

Wow! Another great release on the Motel label. This CD more than lives up to the hype. wilson is a true mad genius. This is not a novelty record, but an album full of amazing songs about unrequitted love and teenage angst - if you ever felt like a freak growing up in your town then you really do know Gary. A must have for the packaging alone.

When I myself was a senior in high school, a friend handed me an odd looking album that was filled with images of a disturbed looking man covered with saran wrap. The music contained within this packaging was even more strange, genius strange. The next year I saw Mr. Wilson at a concert back in his hometown of Endicott and was blown away. Buy this album... or... a plague of locusts will come o'er the land!