At the time I attempted to purchase the rights back for the 3 Homestead records, but the owner demanded an outrageous sum in the neighborhood of $10,000, about 10 times more money than I could get my hands on at the time.
The turning point for me was when the Supreme Court installed Bush in 2000, even though he got half a million votes less nationally than Gore. It was nothing more than a bloodless coup and that's when I really started paying attention.