Ladies and Gentlemen… Gary Wilson & The Blind Dates!
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A Band so bizarre, they flustered the CBGB punks to the point of confusion and disgust. The same crowd that grew to love Stiv Bators.
Imagine that.
You Think You Really Know Me (Front) 1977 – MCM
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Gary Wilson’s main claim to fame, recording-wise, ‘You Think You Really Know Me‘ is one of the more disturbing (and interesting) albums I have had the pleasure of listening to. And that is saying something, considering some of the ‘outsider’ acts in my library; The Shaggs, Luie Luie, Kit Ream, and The Monkees – just to name a few.
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“Sick Trips take the place of someone else’s Blind Dates…”
– When You Walk into My Dreams
You Think You Really Know Me (Back) – 1977, MCM
Released in 1977, the best I can describe the music on You Think You Really Know Me would be ‘Stalker Rock’ – a bizarre mix of lounge lizard bleatings, 70s porn soundtracks, avant-garde angst and Steely Dan funk.
In other words, an Americanized French Song era Davy Jones.
… If Davy never got the girl.
… And then sat in his parent’s basement for the next twenty years action-figuring a way to get her back.
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6.4 = Make Out
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Frankly, there just isn’t anything else quite like ‘You Think You Really Know Me’. At least nothing I have ever heard before. Heck, a great majority of Wilson’s later work doesn’t even come close.
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I took her to the dance last Friday night.
I said, ‘Just wait there. I’ll be right back.’
She said, ‘Gary… that sounds fine.’
When I came back, I told her I fell in love with her.
She said, ‘Gary, falling in love ain’t too cool.’
– Groovy Girls Make Love at the Beach
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I Wanna Lose Control
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The closest comparison I could make would be Kit Ream’s ‘All That I Am’ – although I would be hard pressed to define the exact similarities between the two albums. ‘They both kind of creep me out’ will have to do.
Sure… not many bands sound like The Shaggs, either.
For just over two years I was the sound designer, dialogue looper, mix guy, and chief conceptualist in an outfit called the Linda Sharpe Trio. I worked with an excellent musician who did the majority of synth and rhythm work, which I always felt resulted in the extraordinary. It eventually fell apart to the point I was told to cancel the distribution account being used. This, of course, wiped all material off – I believe – all streaming platforms. Rats.
Linda Sharpe Trio (no ‘the’) is still around doing its thing. Check it out. I’d link the reader to his output platform, but he’d probably threaten another cease & desist for my efforts.
But I’ve got the prior goods. And I want to share a couple of them. This outfit could’a been a contender.
When I began experimenting with electronica in early 2020, one of the first projects I wanted to realize was a soundscape opera based upon Euripides’ tragedy Medea.
With the resurgence of ‘Feminism’ at that time, and how much attention it was getting, I thought Medea was a great metaphor. You have it rough, lady in the Starbucks checkout line? Well dig this…
I’ve worked on it off and on in that time, but needed – at the least, a voice actor to read as Medea. I got one for a spell, resulting in ‘Her Loathed Existence’. The following pieces represent Medea as she realizes her husband has betrayed her – and then when she makes up her mind to see through her horrible revenge.
If interested, here are the demos…
Her Loathed Existence
Her Mind Unfurls Such Dreadful Horrors
Bärkər: Synthesizers, SoundsG.A.B: Recitation Engineered and Produced: BärkərEquipment/Instrumental VSTs used: Ableton Live, Ableton Push 2Recorded: Cyclops' Lair - Middleburg Heights, Ohio
Cover art: jprocyonart
Recorded Live at ‘The Residence’s Basement’ – July 12, 2024 Private Sound & Discussions Event – Kent, Ohio
Performed, Engineered, and Produced: Bärkər
Equipment/Instrumental VSTs used during live recording: Ableton Max for Live, Ableton Push 2, Apple MacBook Pro, Arturia Minifreak, Arturia Tape MELLO-Fi (tape emulator), Ember (Micro Collage Machine), Replicas (Splice Sampler), and Strom (Generative Micro Texture Synth) by Puremagnetik, Focusrite Scarlett 18i20, Zoom H5 portable recorder
Mixed: Cyclops’ Lair – Middleburg Heights, Ohio
Do You Believe?
Live mix of a looping Strom generative synth line, an interview with Ohio’s own, the former Ernest Winston Angley, and an Ember micro collaging of said interview fragments.
Look around! Anger in the news. Anger in music. Anger in comments left at the Betty Crocker forum. Anger in the half-played board game collecting dust on a forgotten table somewhere.
Even in the eyes of the stranger staring at you from the mirror.
And he’s pissed.
It’s scary, man. But I’ve got a plan.
I’m gonna collect all those people that matter to me; all those people that I love. I’m gonna collect them and tell them there ain’t no more anger. Or bitterness. Or cynicism.
Those days as an angry young dog are behind me.
Are they behind you?
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But then I get to thinkin’.
Hey, Dad! Remember the time you were called in to pick me up at the Parma Police station at 3 o’clock one Saturday morning? Remember how you spit in my face and declared me a disgust?
I do.
I remember it like one of those grainy VHS tapes of something recorded off late-night t.v.; low contrasted and jagged-edged with just a whisper of disjointed sound crackling through the static.
Still… I do have to admit my admiration. With nothing but Colt 45 malt liquor and saliva, you managed to create a black hole.
There isn’t a scientist alive who can say the same.
But I kid myself more than I kid you all.
The angry young dog will always morph into a mistrustful hog, rooting not for truffles – but for fragmented confidences.
Finding slim pickings, self-consumption typically begins with the tail and ends at the snout.
But…
But I do got a plan.
I’m gonna collect all those people that mattered to me; all those people that I loved. I’m gonna collect them and bury them like a dog does his bone.
Lend me your ears, my friends. Spare me short a quarter hour, for I have a soundtrack that is born of righteousness.
David Hoffman, a renowned documentarian, interviewed Nettie Mitchell of Fayette, Maine in 1979. The yarn she spun was pure, unadulterated Americana; gothic, resilient, and far too oftentimes unbearably tragic. An impromptu, warts and all jam between Bärkər and Toxic Nemier in 2022 would serve as foundation to the soundtrack. After some 200+ meticulous edits to match the story being told to the music, the finalized track was rejected by the latter due, I’ve reasoned, to musician’s hubris.
Ambitious, emotional, and unflinching, this particular piece has remained dear to me. The storytelling, combined with the emotional build of the instrumentation, is rather powerful. And the payoff of both is a kick to the shins.
Artists do their purest work in obscurity, with minimum feedback from any kind of audience. With no audience to consider, artists are free to create work that is true to their own vision.
In an attempt to educate my daughter without the benefit of spoken word (because the spoken word is passe these days), I went through a spell handfuls of years ago where I wrote mini blurbs on the various musicians I feel important enough to share with her. Considering I have only gotten her into two point five of the artists featured, I am leaning towards learning Sign Language as means of communication.
I could probably get more across.
L-R: Jamie Kaufman, Page Wood, Ralf Mann, Elena Glasberg, George Elliott
One such blubbering blurb that caught her eyes and ears concerned the ’70s No/New Wave band Come On. Actually, she thought Elena Glasberg, rhythm guitarist, cute enough to give them a try. “She’s surrounded by boys!” – “I bet they made her wear that shirt…”
I first became aware of Come On’s music in 1987. A groovy friend had made it his mission to collect as many ‘Now Wave’ singles as humanly possible – preferably on one well-worn cassette, which he copied for anyone that asked. Or didn’t, as was my case. He called it ‘Now Wave’ simply because he was so sick of the New/No Wave arguments that trickled back to us Mid-Western Next Gens. He was a smart guy.
Buried amidst the 72 variants of Siouxsie and the Banchees, deep on the ‘B’ side was a single and accompanying flip side that dealt entirely with kitchens. That’s right: Kitchens.
Self-Released 7″, 1978 – Front CoverSelf-released 7″, 1978 – Back
As most of those around me were musically ignorant – combined with the fact that Mix Tapes weren’t cool unless all songs went unlabeled, it took a couple of years to discover the band’s name. Then another ten years to get my hands on honest-to-God recorded material. Followed by another twenty plus years of preaching their merits to anyone that would listen.
But enough about me. We’re here to talk about Come On.
“Who are these guys? There were five of them, including a female guitarist–neatniks all, favoring white shirts, black pants, and short hair. Half of this belated testament was recorded CBGB 1978, a final track Hurrah 1980. But I’d never heard of them, and when I checked with New York Rocker‘s Andy Schwartz, he remembered only the name. On the evidence of these 16 homages to first-growth Talking Heads, from long before it was determined that the world moved on a woman’s hips, we were missing something: the halting yet propulsive, arty yet catchy ejaculations of the uptight nerd as subversive geek. A five-year-old sex fiend joins suburban tennis players exposing their underthings join two straight songs about kitchens join the incendiary “Old People”: “Get out in the streets/Turn over cars/Elbow young people/Set garbage on fire.” Not important, obviously. Funny, though. B+”
Originating from New York City during the Patti Smith v. Lou Reed heroin wars of the mid 1970s, Come On were an art-based punk band in the purest sense; three of the five band members had limited musical experience prior to forming in the third quarter of 1976 – and in their four years of existence, they released two official 7″ recordings:
Don’t Walk on the Kitchen Floor b/w Kitchen in the Clouds, 1978 – Come On Music, 85XX / 85XY
Housewives Play Tennis b/w Howard After Six, 1980 – Aura Records, AUS 120A / 120B
While that output suggests otherwise, their recording history is a bit more erratically prolific:
Studio/Demo:(unknown) Leave it to Beaver — (Lee Stafford Sound, 8 track) See Me, Come On, She’s Latent, Kitchen in the Clouds — (Right Track Studios, 24 track) Mona Lisa, Don’t Walk on the Kitchen Floor — (unknown: Ron Johnsen demo recordings) Disneyland, Old People, Howard After Six, See Me, Housewives Play Tennis — (Electric Lady Studios, 24 track) I’m Five, Bad Luck with Parents, Pills and Money, Salt and Pepper
Live:(CBGBs) I’m Five, My Neighbor Makes Noise, Businessmen in Space, Pills and Money, Bad Luck with Parents, Physical Ed, Mom and Dad, Salt and Pepper, Nervous Love* — (Hurrah) Disneyland, Come On*, The House*, My Neighbor Makes Noise*, Do the Welfare* — (Max’s) Bad Luck with Parents*, She’s Latent*, See Me/Come On*, Deoxyribonucleic* — (unknown) Love is a Western*, Get Out of Bed*
* = Unreleased
A chunk of these recordings would later be collected on two Heliocentric releases – the ‘Come On: New York City, 1976-80‘ full length** (1999) and the ‘Disneyland +‘ EP (2002); both highly recommended to those fans of the band during the 1980s that only had ‘that Kitchen single’ to go by. Yet also hard to come by.
In 2017, someone released a remastered compilation** of most of the prior material that sounds incredible. Available on Bandcamp in digital and CD forms.
** = The compilation is quite the marvel. Demo cuts on the album came courtesy of a 20 year old cassette copy of the master tapes – and the CBGBs material came from a fan’s handheld recorder smuggled into the club. That this material made light of day is impressive enough.
“Since ‘NYC 1976-80’ came out, other Come On material came to light: an EP of which was released (Disneyland +), and I hope someday some noted label might offer to bring all available material together on a super-definitive Come On collection.”
It is late 1978. I am halfway through my eighth year. My father, taking another step in his spiraling downfall, became involved with a fringe Pentecostal church on the lower west side of Cleveland. He would provide acoustic guitar accompaniment to sermons and hymns during services, and right hand man the preacher throughout the week. I always wondered what the old man got out of the efforts.
I call him ‘old man’, but at the time my father was 27.
It was at these services that I learned the band KISS stood for ‘kids in the service of satan’. Heavy stuff. I also learned that human beings could twist their bodies, their languages, and their minds in a heated celebration of their God. To the left, on any given Sunday, were weeping old women that smelled of licorice. Old men in the back, hooting and hollering their agreements. To the right, younger men and women rolling around on the floor – clawing at themselves, while speaking in tongues.
I was eight.
One Sunday I came in early and noticed stacks upon stacks of Time Magazines littering the first row of pews. This Time Magazine…
The sermon that day, as it often tended, warned of the upcoming Christian decimation that was going to take place prior to THE RAPTURE (always capitalized). This terrible incident at Jonestown, the preacher raged, was proof of God’s plan in action. “If the People’s Temple could be destroyed, so shall us all”.
It was at this point a small part of my soul disintegrated.
My father just stood there, playing his guitar. I have been suspicious of musicians and the fervent ever since.
Two years later, and thanks to some fringe radio program, the old man got his hands on a copy of the infamous ‘Jonestown death tape’. His obsession with the subject was reaching fever pitch. Thinking I was asleep, he would play those recordings late into the nights. Play > Stop > Rewind > Play > Stop > Rewind.
I’d just lay there, trying my best not to cry.
These are the voices you are about to hear: Jim Jones – Maria Katsaris – Jim McElvane – Jim Jones. These are the voices that orchestrated and justified the deaths of 918 people. These were the voices of evil.
It isn’t just the anti-Christs we need to worry about. It is the fervent that blindly follow that are of much greater concern.
I come here not to praise my former efforts, but to bury them; to dedicate to the past a most damnable end, and to the future, a most cordial of welcomes.
It is not now I first remark, but oft ere this, how unruly a pest is a harsh temper. For instance, thou… hadst thou but patiently endured the will of thy superiors, mightest have remained here in this land and house, but now for thy idle words wilt thou be banished. Thy words are naught to me.
– bärkər, ‘the past chambered’, digital collage of various ai manipulations of stock photo, ’24
The Sun’s Ra
What’s it about? A former collaborator once called and relayed to me an experience where two radio frequencies merged on a highway drive. The result was, as suggested ‘like Sun Ra mixed with a radio preacher’. I knew then that was the experimental path that I wanted to travel. I said as much. And I followed through.
Years later, I slaved over this piece as gift and homage for the inspiration provided me. And, considering we would eventually partner up in a project called ‘Linda Sharpe Trio’ – the inspiration provided Us. It was a rough cut, but it was a token that I wanted to share with my desperately wanted friend. The former immediately sneered the effort away. Oof. His idea, you see, didn’t include the Little Rascals.
His idea…
… I should’ve known that trouble was on the horizon. Always trust your instincts, friends. Always.
Within this left unfinished rough cut you will find an Our Gang short, Sun Ra’s brilliance, radio waves from Venus, a short-waved evangelical, underlying sound effects, and grave conviction.
Sculpted, Engineered, and Produced by: Bärkər
Conceptualized: Toxic Nemier
Recorded at Cyclops’ Lair, Middleburg Heights, OH.
