Neutral Milk Hotel guy, silly.
that probably doesn't help him either
As much as I'm into avant-garde and indie nowadays, I have yet to hear it either. In 1998 I was still a classical buyer for Tower. I listened to WRNR instead of HFS (RNR's slide was accelerating, HFS was already unlistenable yet, surprisingly, not at its nadir). Of course, HFS ignored it, too. I don't remember the kids talking about it. And looking at Wikipedia's
1998 in music article, it doesn't appear that I missed much else.