"Stoc Marcut, rest in peace. There will always be Fear of God. Goddamn the war on drugs."
- Dr. Rev. Chuck, M.D., P.A.
I had a friend named Scott Marcus, and he called himself Stoc Marcut. He od'ed himself in 1995; rumor had it that he did this after stabbing this other guy I knew to death. Stoc had been crashing on this guy's couch at the time. I don't know if it was ever actually proven that he killed the guy, but most people I knew who knew anything about it seemed to think he did. Or it could have been done by someone Stock owed money to for dope, who knows. When I heard that he died, I was in belief. It was only a week before when I saw him for the last time nodding out on someone's (an ex-girlfriend's) couch one night near where I lived and worked, down in Hollins Market. I lived around the corner, situated only two doors away from work (washing dishes at Gypsy's Cafe, which has since crumbled to the ground due to a hapless error in renovation) I spent some time hanging out with Stoc for those last couple of months, beginning with that bitter-cold February day when he shouted my name from up the street....
I first met Stoc back in 1981. Some friends & I took the city transit bus down to this industrial / blue-collar area called Arbutus where a couple of bands were going to play in a McDonald's parking lot. Our friend Dave, who we were riding down with, knew these Arbutus guys somehow and was the bass player in their motorhead-ish punk band "Jerry's Kids." They were able to play in the lot that day because one of Jerry's Kids also happened to manage at that McDonalds. While the first band was playing this big fucker that looks like he stepped off the set of Road Warrior slammed into me in front of the stage and knocked me sideways... I grumbled and stared at him for a second.. Well it turned out that this guy was Stoc, the singer for Jerry's Kids. They played and were pretty good for hardcore with a warped sense of humor. Some of their song titles were: "I Hate you", "Step Out of Your Wheelchairs", "Crib Death", "Wife-beater", "Too Drunk to Drive"...etc.
For some reason, I opted to stay down there in Arbutus hanging out at Stoc's house with Dave, the guy we rode down with. Maybe Dave had also decided to stay down there, I don't know. Stoc's place smelled of spilled beer, cigarettes & bong water. I drank a lot of beer & Stoc played us some tapes of some prank phone calls that he had made. I guess I ended up passing out, & when I woke up, Stoc was gone and I was stranded there. I had no money, and the only food in his house was uncooked hot-dogs. Despite this dismal setting I hung around anyway, played his records (I chose The Residents and early Alice Cooper), ate a few of the hot dogs and later snorted a mound of speed I found laying around. That night I drank with Stoc and some other people around there and ended up getting the spins.
Next day I found some change and decided I was getting back to Baltimore even if I had to walk the whole way back. I thumbed a ride which ended up putting me downtown near the harbor. From there it wasn't far to go to get to Charles Village, where I was staying with a friend....
Over the years, I'd run into Stoc now and again at parties, etc. I saw Fear of God (offspring of Jerry's Kids) play somewhere else.. Once, Stoc was MC at a punk covers gig where an old band of mine played. I ran into him again with Keith Worz, a local performance artist and known junky. They were getting ready to do some crazy thing involving Stoc eating lots of oatmeal so he could throw it up. Another time, I heard he cut open a dead pig on stage once during a Fear of God set. A fucking dead pig!!!
~~~
Back to 1995 on the cold street in Hollins Market that February...I heard my name on the street and saw that the voice belonged to Stoc! At that point, it must have been a while since I had seen him last... We start walking up and down Hollins St. as he told me about some recent fucked-up events that had taken place in his life... Getting evicted, spending a month in jail for something or other, being homeless during the month of December. He also mentioned that he wanted to form another band and call it "The Almighty Gods of Fear." He showed me a piece of paper with my name on it that listed the people that he wanted to catch up with. .
He was staying in a small, dark room (like many rooms in SOWEBO) above an old after-hours speakeasy type joint called Medusa's. We walked into the downstairs that day and sat down at the "bar," drinking.. We sat in the dank gloom and drank cans of natty-bo with some crazy English-sounding guy who seemed like he must have been tweaked out on coke or meth or something. I can't even begin to recount the bizarre conversation that unfolded between him and Stoc other than to say that it was theater of the absurd x 10...
It wasn't long before Stoc had to vacate from there. He ended up down in some boarding house way out on Wilkins Ave...the 'hood. He was loaning his car out to dealers down there in exchange for drugs and/or money. He also had been using the car as a hack cab. On its dashboard, in gold block letters read, "THE SLEEK BITCH RIDES AGAIN."
He left me with some tapes: 7-8 cassettes of madness that he created alone or with others. These tapes included two-man comedy skits, impromptu semi-musical recordings by another bunch of lunatics calling themselves "Doctors for Timmy", disturbing messages left by his girlfriend on his answering machine, "unplugged" Fear of God songs and covers, a karaoke version of "Let It Be" completely re-written as "Aunt Bea," which got played on the 98Rock local show.
He also unloaded about 12 boxes of comic books into the basement of where I lived....
I knew he had been using dope, but his death (as well as the alleged homicide) came as a shock to me nonetheless...
