Sunday, July 6, 2008
Do You Really Know the Prince-like prodigy of Endicott?
Early in the documentary You Really Think You Know Me : The Gary Wilson Story, Adrian Milan of Motel Records talked about the first time he heard Wilson's Record Do you Really Know Me: " I just imagined James Brown meets David Lynch's Eraserhead, you know. And the backing band just sounded like Steely Dan on crack. It was just crazy. It was like this incredible ghetto sounding demented blue eyed soul record."
With that enthusiastic description I was hooked as Adrian and his partner Christina Bates were. They had a mission to find Gary Wilson, one of those classsic American oddballs. He was a musical prodigy and one of those geeky kids who never fit in. He and his buddies would do this weird fusion of film and music reminiscent of John Waters in Baltimore or Wayne Coyne (of Flaming Lips in Oklahoma City)
Milan and his partner Bates were turned on to Wilson's album by Ross Harris, a child actor in Airplane! who is also a record collector (Harris gives a quick anecdote that Peter Graves made a pass at him, oh no say it isn't so, Mr Phelps!) He also later hung out with Beck and did the photos for the Mellow Gold album and turned him on to Wilson. As a result, Odelay was definitely influenced by Wilson, and a a shout out to Wilson was located on Where Its At.
Gary left Endicott in 1977. Milan and Bates wanted to re-release Do Your Really Know Who I Am and had to do quite an exhaustive search for him. He eventually surfaced as the night manager in a porno store in San Diego also working as a lounge musician and living for several decades with a video artist.
The bright keyboards in Wilson's music sound to my ears a lot like early to mid seventies Zappa. This music has a sheen to it, a funky kind of rock white boy soul fusion that feels like the seventies contra-disco but still with some of the timbre of disco. His album, Do Your Really Know Me was Home recorded on a TEAC 2430 in the mid seventies by a bunch of former high school outcast nerd friends in Endicott, New York. Bates calls this a music both innocent and disturbing. But several folks interviewed agreed that it is an album that sounds better than a basement effort.
One gets the sense that Wilson is no more or less tweaked than he was when he lived in Endicott in his teens and early twenties. He seems to enjoy getting his old bandmates together and doing concerts in NYC and and a two night homecoming in Endicott at the theater that he saw horror films such as Carnival of Souls and the Mask back in the sixties. His concerts are events with costumes made of bandages, flour dousing on band members and other kinds of macabre zaniness, Director Michael Wolk does a good job painting a portrait of this artist.
Gary's father and John Cage come off as being two significant influences. His father was a stand up bass player in combos and a teen encounter with Cage, who gave him some scores also seemed to be an indelible influence. Wilson's music is available through EMusic. A browsing of the samples will give one the idea of what his unique sound is like. I don't know if one can give it the title of genius, but the pop synth sounds of a musical prodigy defining and describing his disenfranchised youth in a failing manufacturing town and his crushes on girls may connect. And if you perked up when you read Adrian Milan's description of James Brown meets Eraserhead, you know who you are. Here's the trailer:
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:20 PM
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