It was the summer of 1987 and Maureen Tucker, the revered drummer of the Velvet Underground; Jad Fair, the leader of Half Japanese; and a handful of local musicians were elbows-to-ribcages in a cramped suburban Orlando garage. The air conditioner was turned off during takes to get the best possible sound.

It was very, very hot.

The entire session was recorded in one afternoon and released as an EP called Moejadkatebarry.. 

It was as D-I-Y as it gets. David Fair, Jad's brother and Half Japanese co-conspirator, did the cover art and even the circular label was cut by hand. They released it on a label called 50 Skidillion Watts. The label address on the record was 5721 S.E. Laguna Ave. Stuart, Fla. 

What? 

How did Moe Tucker and Jad Fair end up in a town that's known more for the County Fair than avant-garde cultural output?

It was because of M.C. Kostek.

With a wild head of curly hair and a gruff-but-good-natured voice, Kostek laughs and tosses in stories that sound like he hasn't thought of them in 25 years. He’s friendly and easy-going, but behind it all is a encyclopedic knowledge of musicians, records and labels. 

"Every so often, if you say his name enough times, he'll sort of appear in here," said John Clements, a friend and the owner of Confusion Records, a record store that was once in Stuart and has since relocated to Lake Park. "He's a good guy – a lot of fun."

Mike "M.C." Kostek's story begins – like many in South Florida – up north.

He grew up in Greenfield, Mass., and he attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he graduated in 1975. 

One day one of his friends to catch some John Lennon and Yoko Ono movies at a film festival and came home with a "loud, tall – loud guy" who rattled off quotes by the Firesign Theatre. His name was Penn Jillette and you might know him as Penn from Penn & Teller.

Jillette and Kostek were both from Greenfield, and they bonded quickly. Penn took off to make it as a magician and Kostek stayed behind and scraped together enough money to buy Sun Music, the record store where he was working. He's always been an enterprising guy and he also wrote for local newspapers and took other odd jobs. "The idea was to not know what you would be doing in five years," Kostek said. 

Around the same time, Phil Milstein, who was Kostek’s roommate, became obsessed with the Velvet Underground, the archetypal hipsters who were, in the mid-'70s, little more than a footnote in music history. 

"This was '74, '75, '76," Kostek said. "It's hard to think back in the days when communication was so crude. There was no Internet. It was like going back into the mist of time – spelunking – to find anything about this band – when they were a group, if they had singles, their discography. It was a blip in history."

They started a publication called the Velvet Underground Appreciation Society. It was the first complete exploration of the band. If you like the Velvet Underground today, and you enjoy the wealth of information available on the Internet about them, you can thank Kostek and Milstein. 

Music was everywhere. Keith Spring, another friend of Kostek's who worked at Sun and would end up playing saxophone for the band NRBQ, sent away for a record advertised in Trouser Press by Half Japanese. The order came in hand-decorated with party stickers and childlike illustrations. "Talk about do-it-yourself," Kostek said. 

It was the start of an enduring friendship. "M.C. and I have a lot of the same interests," Fair said. "And he was able to get me to meet Moe Tucker, which was a big thrill for me."

In 1979, a time he marks as "26 Northern winters," Kostek was ready for a change of scenery. He and Phil took a long road trip out to California – crashing with Jilette for a bit in San Francisco – but it didn't seem to fit quite right. They did meet Sterling Morrison, the Velvet Underground guitarist who was teaching at the University of Texas in Austin, and Moe Tucker, who was living in Phoenix, but would soon relocate to southern Georgia. Both had given up music; their glory days dead and gone on the prairies and in the desert. 

Florida felt right to Kostek. He moved there not long after. 

It wasn't easy to be an underground rock fan living on the Treasure Coast. Shoot, it's still probably pretty hard to be an underground rock living on the Treasure Coast. Outside of a few pockets – Port St. Lucie, for starters – much of the area is surprisingly underdeveloped. And 30 years ago, there was nothing there. Not "there was nothing cool there" nothing – we're talking nothing nothing.

As a native, I can attest: Here’s what Martin County had from about 1965 to, oh, 1991: A few grovestands, trailers and condos with retirees, some little local shops and thousands of acres of untouched Florida. "Miami had a little scene," Kostek said. "but we were our own isolated little area."

There were options, though. Kostek held the midnight to 6 a.m. shift on WCEZ, the Jupiter AM radio station known for its freeform programming. "That was the situation," Kostek said. "I thought, 'OK, we can make our own world,' because it was pretty much an open format."

So he played a hip little collection of records – James Brown, The Clash – and did weird, freak-out bits, including an ode to the Velvets that you can find on YouTube called “I Love the Underground.”

He kept in touch with Tucker, who was working at a Georgia Wal-Mart and struggling to get by. A few decades before, she had been hobnobbing with Andy Warhol and his coterie of oddballs and artistes at his Manhattan Factory. She began visiting Kostek in Stuart – as did Jad and David – and the nucleus of what would become 50 Skidillion Watts was formed. 

The gang would hang out in town and hit the downtown record store, Confusion Records, right off "Confusion Corner" – the roundabout that even locals used to just close their eyes and gun it through – and visit with John Clements. Half Japanese became regulars in Stuart, even rehearsing and playing a gig at Confusion. "It was almost a democratic thing," Clements said. "If there were 20 guitars on stage, no one would have stepped in and stopped them. David was like Elwood in The Blues Brothers – dancing bizarrely and punching the air."

It was a wild scene for a sleepy town. "I just couldn’t believe they had an act like that," Clements said.

Jad Fair remembers those times – and the weather – fondly. "I'm not very keen on wintertime,” he said.

And, of course, there was Jillette, who was starting to make a name for himself with his irreverent take on magic. He was a Half Japanese fan, too, and in 1987 he fronted the money to start a record label for Fair and the gang to release records. Jad called it 50 Skidillion Watts – a made up name for as many zeros as would fit on the label – and it rose out of the Fairs’ previous label. It wasn't the first time the name had been used, but maybe it was the first time all those zeros were attributed to an actual number. 

The material was either recorded – like Moejadkatebarry – locally, or it was recorded elsewhere – like Half Japanese's Music to Strip By or Jillette's Bongos, Bass & Bob. But no matter where the music came from, business was handled in Stuart by Kostek and his girlfriend-then-wife, Kate Messer. It was a local affair. They found a retired record engineer in Miami Lakes to mix and master the records. They pressed them in Fort Lauderdale. "It was a real do-it-yourself project out of the house," Kostek said. 

But their distribution went far beyond South Florida. They landed a deal with Dutch East India Trading and worked with Gerard Cosloy, who would go on to found Matador Records and release all your favorite records from the '90s – like Guided by Voices, Pavement, Cat Power. Moejadkatebarry sold 5,000 copies. Not bad for a little label.

But this was still do-it-yourself underground rock, and it was still Florida, and if that meant rehearsing in the back of a friend-of-a-friend's Orlando area gift shop – like they did the night before the Moejadkatebarry sessions – well, that's just what they did.

Barry Stock, who now lives in Hollywood, played guitar on the record. An Orlando native, he was a big Sonic Youth fan who had met Kostek through a mutual friend. Before long, he moved in with Messer and Kostek to help run the label and transcribe hours of interviews that had been conducted with Moe Tucker. "The walls were lined with records," Stock said. "He had about 20,000 records in his house, so there was always something to discover."

The label released about 15 records between 1987 and 1991, but the Moe Tucker releases were pivotal.

Her full-length – Life in Exile After Abdication – was the label's full-court press for recognition, and the gang pulled out all the big guns they could find. Kramer, a friend of Barry and Jad who would make his mark as producer of Galaxie 500, produced the record at his New York studio Noise New York. Members of Sonic Youth played on the record. Daniel Johnston was hanging around. Even Lou Reed came in and played a solo. 

"Lou and Moe seemed to have a great reunion," Kramer, who has since also moved to South Florida, said. "I think it paved the way for the Velvets reunion that happened not long after."

They might have been the only two having a good time. Kramer says he was fired before the record was completed and he is still displeased at the way he was credited on the album. Both he and Stock clashed with Messer, who did return requests for an interview. 

In many ways, it would spell the end for 50 Skidillion, which never topped the Abdication peak. 

Barry and Kramer moved on. Stock continued to play music and work with tropical trees, while Kramer would work with Jillette on projects from music to Broadway. Jillette did not respond to interview requests by press time. Kramer, who considers Jillette one of his closest friends, mentioned that the whole ordeal might be something he just doesn't feel like reliving. 

Everyone has their own side to tell, and certainly all are equally valid. But what happened is this: Personalities and egos got in the way. People communicated poorly or behaved immaturely. Feelings were bruised. Fights were had. Mistakes were made.   

Then Dutch East India went kaput. And Kostek became a father. "After five years or so, that was enough," Kostek said. "It was time to be a parent."

Kostek and Messer divorced in 1992. Messer moved to Austin, where she now writes for the Austin Chronicle. Kostek got a full-time gig as a 911 dispatcher. He still travels around the world to record fairs and sells records on eBay. Fair continues to make art and music and moved near Austin as well.

Tucker made news recently when she was interviewed at a Georgia Tea Party rally. The left was crushed to see a rock icon standing with the far-right. Both Kostek and Clements weren't. "It wasn't a surprise for me," Kostek said. 

It's been more than 20 years since 50 Skidillion ended its run. We're told the D-I-Y movement birthed Nirvana and Pearl Jam and the rest of the grunge scene, which is true in a way, but in a sense, it seems closer to the Internet Revolution of today – musicians and fans putting out there own product because they can and they want to. 

Like South Florida itself, 50 Skidillion seems a part of the rest of the world, but also strangely isolated. Compared to Sub Pop or Matador or SST, it’s a blip on the radar. But it's South Florida's blip nonetheless, and wasn't that the whole point? "It's nice to know the records still hold up," Kostek said. "Every once in a while I see them in the store and I have to buy them and take them home."

All these years later, Kostek is happy. "Everyone should have to put out, like, five albums," Kostek said. "Not just YouTube clips – something physical."

This article originally appeared on July 3, 2012, on darrenwhitecreative.com.