hen the musician Gary Wilson finally joined his band onstage at a packed gig in New York, he wore a black wig and a bedsheet draped over his head. He brought to the stage a roll of masking tape and a life-size inflatable doll, which he eventually duct-taped around his torso and dragged around all night. The audience, primarily 20-somethings, watched in awe, digital cameras flashing one after another, waiting to see what Gary Wilson—the Gary Wilson—would do next. He teased them in a drone—You Think You Really Know Me?

Such a loyal fanbase would not exist, were it not for the re-release of Wilson’s 1977 record You Think you Really Know Me in 2002, and a full-length documentary of the musician’s career that came shortly thereafter. About half of Wilson’s set came from that album, an album he recorded when he was 24 in his parents’ basement in Endicott, NY. He has never had a radio hit and has played only sporadically since the release of You Think You Really Know Me in 1977. Wilson looks more than pleased that, decades later, he’s gaining the popularity he always wanted.

In 1977 , the Clash came out with their first album. David Bowie released a hit record with Heroes. Steely Dan recorded Aja which peaked at No. 3. Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give it Up” hit number one.

And, in Endicott, NY, outside Binghamton, Gary Wilson wrote You Think You Really Know Me, a synth-heavy funk album inspired by lost teenage loves. It’s James Brown on Quaaludes, dressed up in women’s clothes, on his knees in a high school gym. After the album’s initial release, Wilson toured with the songs briefly, and then disappeared. When rediscovered a few years ago, Wilson was working at a pornography bookstore in San Diego.

You Think You Really Know Me is a lyrical freak-out, a conversation between Wilson and a collection of women listed on a first name basis. We get to know Karen during “6.4 = Make Out,” as the true object of Wilson’s affection, though not the girl he’s with. “Hey baby you’re everything to me / But did I ever tell you / I got a real crush—on Karen?” Wilson is with Cindy, at least sometimes, who is a “cool chick” because she “makes out like a mink,” and lets you take her out, if you can beat other callers to her door—Wilson himself suggests an arrival “about 9:20.” Wilson’s songs sound like rumors, like Gary Wilson is introducing you to the students in the high school of his brain.

You can get lost in the lyrical progressions on this album, which can be unfortunate. Lyrically, YTYRKM doesn’t always speak to Wilson’s ability the way so many of the instrumental tracks and breaks do. You can forget, lost in the rant of the album’s adlibs, that Wilson wrote and recorded nearly every track himself. The break “You Were Too Good to be True” takes the changes and jazz/funk texture of a Herbie Hancock jam and applies them to his basement studio sound. The result is a dance number, strong on keyboard with a saxophone-mimicking guitar. It’s a song that a band like Steely Dan would record with fifteen hired musicians to fill every solo—Wilson carries it out alone, with only a drummer to fill time.

It’s easy to overlook the music as a sort of joke. It is what it sounds like—a stocky guy singing funk songs in a Barry White tone about girls it sounds like he never stole more than a glance from. But underneath, Wilson’s earnestness makes this record, even the live show decades later, more than just a novelty to shake your camcorder at. It’s unnerving that Gary Wilson has the capacity to scare us when he collapses onstage next to a blow-up doll in a whirl of keyboards, because something about Gary Wilson, with his costumes and his props and his cult following, is so unashamedly exposed.

There’s a reason every Gary Wilson blog and newspaper article mentions the pop musician Beck Hansen, who drops Wilson’s name in his mid-‘90s hit “Where it’s At” (“Passin’ the dutchie from coast to coast / Let the man Gary Wilson rock the most”). Not only does the title sound like an adlib from Wilson’s album, Wilson paved the way for the sort of one-man band Beck made famous with Odelay and Midnite Vultures. Those albums sound like the descendents of You Think you Really Know Me, the pop-friendly interpretation. Beck is to Gary Wilson what Elvis is to Chuck Berry, the Hollywood portrayal.

When Gary Wilson plays onstage today, it’s with the same band he played with in high school—the Blind Dates. They’re all from Endicott, a suburb of Binghamton, and the rest of the band—save Gary—live and work there today. Gary’s songs have a different effect than they once did, a result of singing the same hormonal songs 25 years later, and his newer songs seem to serve the same purpose. Wilson joined the hip-hop label Stones Throw to release a record of new material called Mary Has Brown Hair, an album of songs that would probably fit on his first recording. Only rather than singing about girls as slightly perverted fantasies, they’re now haunting memories, performed onstage in costumes with bags of flour and sunglasses and inflatable girlfriends. In one song, Wilson takes his inflatable doll and attaches her to his guitarist for a song about one girl’s staggering betrayal. Before long, Wilson is losing his wig and seems tired when to his delight, the girl is taped securely onto his midsection—safe and sound.