'Halo composer Michael Salvatori founded this long-forgotten band in 1976 with his wife, Gail, and his brother, Tom.' | Steve Krakow
Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave 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 phenomenon extended down to the grass roots, with Chicagoland kids forming their own prog bands—including the short-lived and completely unknown Apocalypse. While most teenage basement bands were singing about cars and girls, Apocalypse were tuning up double-neck guitars to create suites about faraway lands—and their lone recording, unreleased for nearly 50 years and given up as lost for two decades, finally came out last month.
By the mid-70s, Tom was playing guitar in a cover band with his classmates called Phase IV . “Before Mike asked me to be in his band in 1976 . . . we played high school sock hops and every ‘battle of the bands’ we could find,” Tom says. “We covered Deep Purple, Grand Funk, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Led Zeppelin, Kansas, Chicago, Cat Stevens.”
Magnesen wasn’t the first drummer Apocalypse tried, but he was the one who fit. “When we had Scott audition, Mike was really pleased with his skill and energy,” Tom says. “When Scott joined the band, we really started to gel and it felt like a real band.” Apocalypse began recording a demo in September 1976, cutting five tracks at a basement studio in Elmhurst. “It was quick,” says Tom. “We went there and just played through our songs with no overdubs.” The remaining sessions, held in 1977, doubled as a test of the new equipment in Mike’s home studio; they produced two more songs, including a cover of “Le Clochard” by Focus. Apocalypse never released the recordings, though—they only sent them to bookers and promoters to get gigs.
That five-song master is 38 minutes long, and it could’ve been a full-fledged album in its own right, with completely realized songs on an epic scale.
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