He is the editor of Drag City-published magazine Galactic Zoo Dossier, eponymous front man for Plastic Crimewave Syndicate and co-member of Spiral Galaxy, founder of the Million Tongues Festival, and Vision Celestial Guitarkestra.

[3] While enrolled at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Crimewave discovered Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive" and space rock group, Hawkwind,[4] and began drawing and designing concert posters.

His comics background and rapidly burgeoning preoccupation with psychedelic culture led to the first issue of Galactic Zoo Dossier magazine.

Some of the musicians Crimewave has interviewed for GZD include Arthur Brown, John Renbourn, Clive Palmer of Incredible String Band, Simeon of Silver Apples, Michael Karoli and Damo Suzuki of Can, Vashti Bunyan, Peter Daltrey of Kaleidoscope, Judy Dyble of Fairport Convention, Martin Carthy, Sixto Rodriguez, Dick Taylor of The Pretty Things, Pip Proud, Dave Lambert of The Strawbs, Simon Finn, Susan Jacks and Craig McCaw of The Poppy Family and Michael Rother of Neu!, Edgar Broughton, Judy Dyble, Jesse Hector, Peter Daltrey of Kaleidoscope, etc.

The column runs in coordination with WGN's Secret History of Chicago Music segment on The Nick Digilio Show, in which Crimewave takes listener phone calls related to the featured musician.

[14] Pitchfork Media's Jessica Hopper described My Kind of Sound as "an education even for us know-it-all music obsessives, and are the only comics that have sent me directly to the record store to dig in the bins for dusty gems.

The band consisted of Plastic Crimewave, bassist Mark Lux (Raspberry Kidd), drummer Lawrence Peters (Skog Device), Steve's brother Adam (Hands of Hydra) on second guitar.

Crimewave also has the roving imprint Galactic Zoo Archive which has co-released LPs by Simply Saucer, Ono, Bil Vermette, and Red Square.

His apartment has been called a "personal museum",[30] with over 7,000 LPs, 30,000 comics, around 2,000 45s, a 1967 Seeburg jukebox,[31] action figures, advertisements and psychedelic concert posters.