Gary Wilson: I think he really means it
The best place to get the whole juicy (and true) story is to go to Netflix and order up the mid-2000s documentary You Think You Really Know Me: The Gary Wilson Story. Whether you’re fan or curious onlooker, this’ll grab you.
You’ll find out about the LA record collector who was the conduit of Gary’s first album to Beck. You’ll find out about the record company that hired a detective to track down Gary – absent from the public eye for 20 years – so they could re-release that first album. You’ll find out where he was when he was absent – San Diego, night-managing a porn store. You’ll see home footage from the earliest stirrings of Gary’s avant tendencies back in his beloved (sort of) Endicott, NY. And you’ll see Gary’s strangely emotional Endicott homecoming concert. Cool flick.
But how could it be anything else? Gary is unique, musically and otherwise. The first time he visited the Tip Records offices (indistinguishable at the time from the Duncan/Channon offices) he spied a random roll of duct tape under a table and asked with quiet intensity: “Can I borrow that?” And so you come to understand that duct tape is more than just a prop for Gary. And that knowledge is just the beginning of understanding that the music and the flour and the hospital gowns and the Saran Wrap and the lipstick and the rubberized versions of Linda and Mary and Cheryl come from somewhere deep inside the man, that even when he’s being funny (and he’s hilarious), Gary Wilson really means it.
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