Gary Wilson: You Think You Really Know Me Re-Issues from Motel Records

First published in The Absolute Sound. Copyright © 2002 by Absolute Multimedia. Reprinted with permission.

Gary Wilson: You Think You Really Know Me
Motel Records (re-issues) MRCD 007 (CD); MRLP 007 (LP)

Thanks to these Motel Records re-issues, now more than a handful of people can experience the musical singularity that is Gary Wilson, whose obscure self-recorded, produced and marketed album, You Think You Really Know Me, was released in 1977 to almost no notoriety.

Almost. You see, the album did manage to attract the attention of some, including "The Simpsons" cartoonist Matt Groening, Beck—and yours truly. Since the day I first heard the record, it's been one of my all-time favorites (as noted in The Absolute Sound in 1984 and 1995). In fact, it is a record I simply have to listen to at regular intervals, one of the funniest, yet serious, and utterly outrageous records I've ever heard.

I love it for its unique hybrid of mutated jazz-pop, as rendered by Fender Rhodes electric piano, Farfisa organ, funky/cheesy/hip synthesizer melodies and bass lines, moaning fuzz guitar, surprisingly sophisticated chord changes and bizarre sonic interludes. But it's Gary's impassioned, ironic, pleading vocals that launch the album into another galaxy—simultaneously sad and hysterically funny odes to groovy girls with red lips, make out parties, his "Chromium Bitch," Gary desperately trying to get the girl but…as he laments in the monumental "6.4 = Make Out": "Hey when I called you last night/You said you'd be at the party/but when I got there you weren't there/What are you trying to do to me, put me on a sick trip or something?"

It's miraculous that Motel Records has re-issued You Think You Really Know Me. I don't have space to recount how they tracked down the reclusive Wilson to re-issue the record—let's just say the Motel owners flipped over it the same way I did. The sound (mostly mono) of both the CD and LP, remastered by Joe Yannece at The Hit Factory, is warmer and richer (the CD's bass is more boosted, at Gary's request), with more presence and less sibilance than the original LP. Considering the master tapes were recorded on a four-track reel-to-reel, the sound is remarkably clear and detailed. And you have to see the packaging—a picture's worth a thousand kisses. There's no other album like this in this or any other parallel universe. To quote Gary: "Whooooo!"