Marcopocast #25: 1999 Vibes. An Audio Essay by Frank Marcopolos

We’re on the verge of the 2020’s and that got me thinking back to 1999, when everyone was talking about the millenium and being on the verge of something totally new, something out of a science fiction story or a danceable Prince song. It was a cool year in the American cultural landscape. Movies that came out that year included American Beauty, Fight Club, Being John Malkovich, The Blair Witch Project, The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, and Eyes Wide Shut. Other cultural phenomena included Y2K, Pokemon, The Harry Potter Series, boy bands, and rap/metal pop, including new artists like Kid Rock and Eminem.

Aaaaaand it was within this American culture that my childhood

pal Chris Micha and I decided to move into a small, two-bedroom apartment on

Staten Island. The place smelled of ashy plaster, rust, and cigarette smoke,

and was within walking distance to the pigeon-shit-stained Ferry into

Manhattan. I was two years out of the Army and working sixty hours a week at

Morrell Fine Wine Auctions, while sending out short stories to magazines for

rejection. Chris was hustling graphic design jobs and gigging at night with his

band, Das Phrogge. I was 27 and Chris was 23.

We were artistic brothers, with our world view

shaped by Bill Hicks, Charles Bukowski, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and Nirvana.

That meant, basically, that our drinking and pot-smoking would be heavy, with

periods where other kinds of drug use would be called into the service of

artistic warfare. The Hicks monologue: “Drugs have done good things for us. If

you think they haven’t, go home and take all your albums and burn ‘em. Cuz all

the artists that made all the music that’s been a soundtrack to your life? They

were reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaal fuckin’ high on drugs” – was our artistic call to

arms. The Bukowski quote: “Find what you love and let it kill you” was written

on my bedroom door. There was a kind of fervent belief in the altered mind that

was impressive in its depth, if only that. In the end, that belief cost Chris

his life.

I’ve often felt I escaped the same fate only because of fear.

Specifically, the fear of needles. My completely irrational fear of

needles—stemming from my childhood, when I had to get shot up a bunch of times

because of a variety of ailments—kept me off the hard stuff that eventually

took Chris’s life. And that was truly the only Rubicon I would not cross.

Everything else was fine, especially oceans of ale, but needles were an

automatic no-go.

Back to ’99, though. As Chris and the band were getting ready

to go into the studio to record what they envisioned as the first of many successful

indie-rock albums, Chris mentioned to me that Tower Records sold zines. I had

been talking about starting a literary magazine of some kind because I was

tired of getting rejected all the time, and Chris thought zines could serve as

a model for how to do a new kind of literary magazine. I didn’t know what a

zine was, though, so I went to the Tower in Greenwich Village one night and

bought a bunch.

So, Das Phrogge went into the studio with Ron Thal and

recorded “Body and Mind,” and I had myself an underground literary magazine. But

there is no Hollywood ending to this story. Neither Chris nor I went on to

reach the heights of artistic fame and fortune we had so colorfully dreamed of

in that creaky apartment on the Isle of Staten. And I know Chris held onto some

level of resentment about that, while I—on the other hand—had been conditioned

through the thousands of rejections I got from every magazine in America to

know better than to truly, 100% believe in my dreams.