Pieces by Marcos Part 2: Lost in Albuquerque

That's Right—we found him!

An article in our recent Local Music Issue titled “Pieces by Marcos” told the tale of 33-year-old former Santa Fean Warren Langford and a Tiger brand Talkboy tape recorder he bought at a yard sale almost 15 years ago. Inside the toy tape recorder—which you may recall as a major set piece of the classic Home Alone 2: Lost in New York—was a cassette that contained a DIY radio show produced by a young boy named Marcos, which featured 30-second “songs” that sounded like keyboard demos or Muzak, DJ impersonation intros and all.

Langford soon became obsessed, and since then, he's been trying to track Marcos down, with no luck. Well, guess what? We found him.

The investigation process wasn't easy. Langford pieced together a timeline, looked into addresses surrounding the original yard sale location and faced more than a few dead ends. Everyone he knew who was familiar with the story asked every Marcos they had ever encountered if the tape was their handiwork. After SFR published the story, we even got a response from someone who we were positive was the right Marcos, but he turned out to be the wrong guy. It was definitely discouraging, but then we heard from 29-year-old Marcos Lujan.

"Hello. My name is Marcos Lujan, and I'm the Talkboy…boy. I'm 29 years old and grew up in Santa Fe," his email read.

We were cautiously optimistic but thrilled. See, this Marcos knew Leo and Dakota (close friends from elementary school, mentioned on the cassette), and his age lined up. A couple hard-boiled interviews and a prayer to Tim Curry later, we were sure—this is the Marcos.

"I don't know how to feel yet, and I haven't had time to process everything, but it has brought on self-reflection, and I've been thinking back to my childhood, so it has been very introspective," Lujan says. "I haven't combed through [the tape] thoroughly yet, but I have listened and got a big kick out of it."

Lujan attended Salazar Elementary with his friends Dakota and Leo at the time the tape was recorded, and later Santa Fe High, before moving to Albuquerque for college. He says he was always working on some kind of creative project in those years, but he hadn't thought about the Talkboy or his incursion in the lo-fi radio realm in years.

"I don't think I was a Home Alone fan, but I was at the age where if you saw something cool on TV, you just wanted it," he says. "I'm thinking the Talkboy must have come out around Christmas, and my parents got it for me."

If you haven't heard it, the tape is oddly amazing. It's clearly the work of an elementary school-aged kid, but it does fall squarely into the ever-fascinating category of found art/audio. Langford's band, Pure Moods, even covers one of the songs, and though we had assumed the music was probably created with keyboard demos commonly found on Casio instruments and the like, Lujan says that he believes the songs were Windows audio files from his parents' desktop.

"I think they may have been MIDI or WAV files that came with [the] computer when Windows was first starting to become a thing," he remembers hazily.

There were other tapes, and Lujan says he can recall spending a fair amount of time creating them. Unfortunately, none seem to have survived outside of the original Talkboy discovery. These days, Lujan is a human services caseworker in Albuquerque and also works in costuming and set design for a community theater.

"Creativity has always been a strong influence in my life," he muses.

The story becomes more interesting, too, because it turns out Langford had a connection to Lujan the entire time.

"I dated Warren's brother Evan's girlfriend's roommate, if that makes sense," Lujan says with a slight laugh. "I've spent a lot of time interacting with Evan, and I guess he just never put two and two together."

Still, one wonders if that ultimate payoff would have been less satisfying had it not been for the many years between the discovery of the tape and the tracking down of Lujan.

Langford, by the way, is pumped, despite concerns that his long-held obsession may have come across as strange to Lujan. He says that early discussions were "cool and collected," and that "he just seemed to be very interested in the whole deal." And yet, it's a bittersweet pumped-ness. So often, the journey is its own reward, and finally locating the elusive Marcos has left him wistful.

"It's a good feeling, and I got a big rush of energy the other day; today, I'm kind of mourning the mystery," a collected Langford tells SFR. "When you published the original article, I was about halfway through producing a radio/podcast segment about the cassette, and there were some great twists and turns, but this was the ending I was hoping for."

Langford says that he always assumed the music was more than just keyboard demos, and that learning what he has about Lujan and the production of the tape has ultimately left him with a strong feeling of vindication. And even though the main part of the long search for the elusive Talkboy DJ has come to a close, Langford still has a few things left to accomplish in the Marcos arena.

"Oh, I'm definitely going to try and meet with Marcos next time I'm down there, and even though it's broken now, I'd like to reunite him with the Talkboy," the now Seattle-based Langford says excitedly. "Also," he said, "there is a carwash in Albuquerque that plays one of the tunes, and I've gotta check that out."

He is also on the lookout for the original MIDI and/or WAV files used by Marcos.

On the surface, the story of Marcos is one that is seemingly ephemeral, but based on the amount of leads it produced, it captured the attention of many Santa Feans. Personally, I'd like to think that the little boy and his friends experimenting with music and radio production would surely be excited to know that a musician of Langford's caliber spent so much time tracking them down, or that so many others would be so interested in the tape's origins.

The story has even inspired Lujan himself. He says that he hadn't spoken with Dakota or Leo in years, but the article inspired him to contact both. Thus far, he's only found Dakota, so if Leo is out there and reading this, we'd love to hear from him as well.

Perhaps what draws people to a story like this or motivates someone like Langford to search for the creator of a fake radio show is the human element that comes attached. Once there was a young boy who had a silly toy tape recorder, and with it, he showed an interest in music and radio in the most creative way he knew how. It was a precursor to the artistic hobbies that one day would turn into a career, and the first of many steps that taught him how good it can feel to create for oneself, without worrying about whom the art is created for.

As the years went by, the boy and his tape were sadly separated and eventually forgotten. Then, one day—years later—he discovered there were people out there whose lives had been positively affected by his early stab at creativity. It's a testament to the innocence and experimentation of youth, sure, but it also speaks to the enduring qualities of art and music that connect us. Certainly, young Marcos never thought his show would serve as a kind of time capsule that inadvertently forced Langford or even future Marcos to reflect fondly on their childhood, but he did just that.

Whether or not it was apparent from the start, there was something intangible from within the bittersweet recollection of youth that drove us to find Marcos Lujan, and the connections that have been reestablished have been worth the hassle. Marcos and his music became an accidenta time capsule and an inadvertent reminder that no matter where we are now, we once had nothing but blank tape ahead of us.

Letters to the Editor

Mail letters to PO Box 4910 Santa Fe, NM 87502 or email them to editor[at]sfreporter.com. Letters (no more than 200 words) should refer to specific articles in the Reporter. Letters will be edited for space and clarity.

We also welcome you to follow SFR on social media (on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) and comment there. You can also email specific staff members from our contact page.