Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place.
The “round house,” as Frank calls it, was designed for the family by avant-garde architect Bruce Alonzo Goff and completed in 1955. “The Garvey house was a surreal oasis,” Frank recalls. “It was an incredible psychedelic environment.” Its layout allowed the Garveys to practice at home or host concerts in the large central space; its bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, and dining area were arranged around the circular perimeter.
Garvey took classes at SAIC from 1976 till ’82 and at the UIC Chicago Circle campus from 1980 till ’82, at which point he moved to Oakland to attend Laney College. He studied there till 1988, exploring printmaking, surrealist oil painting, and kinetic sculpture. In the Bay Area, he launched the Theatre Concrete, which he calls “a multimedia performance space that took Omega one step further with virtuoso-level collaborations with actors, robotics, and filmmaking professionals.”
In 2015, illness spelled the end of the OmniCircus space. “I developed throat cancer in 2011,” Garvey explains, “and the treatment—which included radiation and an experimental immunotherapy chemo—not only burned my face off, it also completely destroyed my ability to keep OmniCircus going.”
