AllMovie

In 1977, Gary Wilson was the leader of a small clique of bohemian fringe artists in the small town of Endicott, NY, who, after years of staging bizarre happenings and making experimental films, decided to take his talents to the world by making an album. Recorded on a semi-pro setup in his father's basement, Wilson's You Think You Really Know Me was an oddball blend of fusion jazz, new-wave pop, prescient electronic funk, and noisy freak outs married to bizarre lyrical psycho dramas about his often curious relationships with women. Most listeners weren't ready for Wilson's music in 1977, and his live shows with his band the Blind Dates -- which sometimes included musicians wrapped in duct tape or covered with paint, and occasionally ended with Wilson attacking the audience -- didn't help at all. Wilson's self-released album sank like a stone, but with the passage of time it developed a cult following among fans of musical arcadia (most notably Beck, who even name-checked Wilson in one of his tunes), and in 2002 the independent record label Motel Records became interested in re-issuing You Think You Really Know Me; however, by that time, Wilson had been out of the music business for years, and no one was sure what became of him. You Think You Really Know Me: The Gary Wilson Movie is a documentary which follows the search for Gary Wilson, tracing his story from his days as a teenage misfit to his rediscovery while working in a porn bookstore in California to his return to the stage following the rerelease of his album.