Features

Back in 1977 while shopping for Sun Ra records in my favorite Philly store, I discovered this bizarre-looking album.  The cover featured the artist, Gary Wilson, posing in an early-'60s mod suit and funny sunglasses, in what turned out to be his parents' basement.  The back jacket was another basement shot of Wilson, this time in his underwear, lying amidst a tangle of recording tape, wires and covered with baking flour.  There were also song titles and the artist's address in upstate New York, but nothing else.

I had to buy it.

When I cued down the old Grado G2+, I found a collection of impassioned unrequited love songs, sung by a seeming loser, whining about all the high school girls who had ignored him.  Slick jazz-rock arrangements (with Wilson on nearly all instruments) anchored the tunes, which featured harmonically and rhythmically sophisticated yet accessible hooks set against a hard funk backbeat.

I became obsessed with this music, largely because of Wilson's voice:  an urgent and angularly phrased croon, punctuated with oddly-placed “Heys,” “Haahs,” and “Wooos.”  (His two biggest vocal influences are Dion and Rod Serling.) Friends, who I literally forced to listen, ended up sharing my Wilson obsession, with most trying in vain to find their own copies. (It took one guy 20 years.) My colleague Frank Doris was the most severe case. After he begged me to copy the album for him, he played the tape in his car continuously during his morning and evening commute. He even recorded the album on both sides of the cassette because he couldn't bear to wait for the rewind.

 In 1978, Frank and I performed together in a new wave band at CBGB's. Our set list consisted of all originals plus two Gary Wilson covers. One year later, we were blessed to hear Gary Wilson and his backup band, The Blind Dates, perform selections from the album on the very same CBGB's stage. 

Soon afterward, Wilson vanished, but his cult carried on, eventually touching recording artists such as Beck, Husker Du, and The Residents, who cite him as an influence.  More recently, Wilson's music reached young Adrian Milan and Christina Bates of Motel records, who reacted as I had all those years ago. They set out to find Wilson in 2002 (even resorting to private investigators) and eventually discovering him living in a phone-less San Diego apartment.  He was splitting his time between playing a lounge act in an Italian restaurant and cashiering the night shift at an adult bookstore.

The couple learned that Wilson is a performance artist heavily influenced by the New York School of modern classical composition, headed by John Cage and Christian Wolff.   Wilson had even studied with Cage at the age of 16.  Luckily for us, Wilson still had the master tape of his cult masterpiece, which Motel released on CD in 2002 as well as on limited edition vinyl. To publicize the reissue and to help give Wilson his due, the label brought him to New York that year for two shows at the intimate, classy Joe's Pub.

Mr. Milan, also a talented drummer, put together an appropriately slick band to replicate Wilson's way-ahead-of-his-time musical vision of Steely-Dan-on-crack-meets-John-Cage-playing-lounge-music, which the group, fronted by Wilson, performed to perfection in front of a pack of screaming Wilson fans, myself, Mr. Doris and Michael Fremer among them.  

Wilson's voice was in top form, with his phrasing having matured and grown new subtlties. Kneeling on stage and serenading a couple of unclad mannequins while his videographer ritualistically sprinkled him with baking flour, the stone-faced Wilson delivered his almost quarter-century-old material with total conviction-as if he'd just written it. And it sounded equally fresh and timeless.

How powerful was the experience? I snickered at Frank Doris when he told me he had arranged to take the next day off from work as he felt he couldn't function after seeing Wilson live. He stayed home the next day, and although I went to work, I couldn't function. The show had moved me more than any rock concert had in 15 years.

MOTEL RECORDS-THE SECOND RELEASE

The Motel group didn't stop at one CD/LP.  They wanted to know what other material Wilson had that they could release. Wilson provided them with master tapes and, in some cases, rare pressings of all Wilson's material recorded from 1973-9, including some rarities that had never been released. Motel compiled the best of these recordings on a superb second CD released, entitled Forgotten Lovers (Motel MRCD 008). 

Although the material on this CD, overall, is not as priceless as You Think You Really Know Me  every cut is superb and demonstrates Wilson's versatility.

It kicks off with the catchy rare soul/funk instrumentals “Dream(s)/Soul Travel,” Gary Wilson's first recording, a studio release influenced by both Herbie Hancock and Barry White. Don't try to find this original single on eBay. Only four copies are known to exist, and this is the only recorded sample on the Forgotten Lovers CD where the master tape was destroyed and the cuts were dubbed from a mint vinyl pressing. (You'd never know it from the uniformly superb sound on the CD.) Two cuts from Wilson's first vinyl LP release, 1973's Another Galaxy is also included and features Wilson overdubbing himself on acoustic piano and string bass in a jazz group that extracts equally from Bitches Brew Miles Davis and John Coltrane, but is forward-thinking enough to not be out of place in a David Lynch movie soundtrack.  

Although Wilson's talents span many instruments, it's clear from his tasty soloing on this recording that string bass is his primary axe.    

Most of the material on Forgotten Lovers covers all of the Wilson material released on EP and LP immediately after You Think  You Really Know Me.  The best are the three tracks from 1978's Wedding Gown EP. “NY Surf (aka Gary's Theme)” is an infectious jazz-rock instrumental that would not be out of place as the theme to a 70's TV cop show. I get chills every time I listen to it as this is the tune that Gary always opens up his live shows with prior to his entrance.  I've seen Wilson enough times that my brain is programmed to react to this tune in a Pavlovian sense; it expects a live show to follow. 

Two disturbing love ballads follow: “Chrome Lover,”  with Wilson playing the stalker over a backdrop for saxophone, Fender Rhodes, a music box, and “found sounds” of running water, a telephone operator, backward tape loops and a vacuum cleaner.   The final track is “I Want to Take You on A Sea Cruise,” a captivating jazz ballad that features a super wailing tenor sax solo by Frank Roma. 

Of all the tracks on Forgotten Lovers, I recommend seeking out an original copy of the Wedding Gown EP (Gary Wilson 304087).(They occasionally pop up on Ebay and are expensive.)  Not because the vinyl offers higher sound quality (the CD actually sounds better), but because on the original vinyl, “Sea Cruise” is a different mix.  Instead of Roma's sax solo, there is a haunting and virtuosic piano solo by Wilson that is reminiscent of Marilyn Crispell's best (note that this track was recorded in 1978, which predated Crispell's first release by about five years). 

 The cover artwork features Wilson in a wedding dress on the front cover, and his poetry on the back, wherein he describes a fertility ritual where he goes into his basement wearing his wedding gown, covers himself in flour and milk and masturbates.

Forgotten Lovers  also includes some unreleased tracks from the You Think You Really Know Me  period, my favorite being “You Took Me For a Walk Into My Mirror.”  Imagine Wilson repeating “You are my girlfriend, that entitles me to one kiss” over a backdrop of tape loops and Cecil Taylor pushing a piano out the window.

Unfortunately, both of these “must have” CDs are out of print, as Motel Records folded shortly after the release of Forgotten Lovers  as the dissolution of Milan and Bates' personal relationship resulted in the shutdown of the record company.  However, both CDs are plentiful: Forgotten Lovers  was never released on vinyl) and new and used copies show up frequently on eBay at reasonable prices.

I should also point out for rabid collectors that there are four versions of You Think You Really Know Me in existence.  The Motel vinyl and CD releases both sound superb, but compared to the original 1977 pressing (Gary Wilson, no catalog number), have the bass boosted a bit, and the vocals have been put through a de-esser (the closely miked vocal sibilants of the original pressing were difficult to track with the cartridges of the day). The only way to get the stark and striking black and white cover (all later versions have the red and black cover) is to find an original, which are rare and very expensive. (The last time I saw one on eBay, Wilson himself was bidding on it.)  

Around 1990, Cry Baby records re-released the album on vinyl (Cry Baby BH03), which sounds identical  to the original release. These also pop up on eBay and for more reasonable prices than the original. (In fact, although Cry Baby Records is no longer in existence, the founders now own new and used music retailer Philadelphia Record Exchange. Give them a call.  If you're nice to them, maybe they'll look in the basement and find another box of vinyl.)