The Big Takeover
| Editor-in-Chief | Jack Rabid |
|---|---|
| Categories |
Music Entertainment |
| Frequency | Quarterly |
| First issue | 1980 |
| Country | United States |
| Based in | New York City, New York |
| Language | English |
| Website | www |
The Big Takeover is a quarterly music magazine published out of New York City since May 1980 by critic Jack Rabid.
Jack Rabid and Dave Stein began publishing The Big Takeover in May 1980 as a fanzine dedicated to New York punk band the Stimulators. The pair had formed a garage band the previous month called Even Worse, originally played mainly punk rock cover songs. Even Worse was quickly tapped to open a show for the Stimulators, and the publication followed. Rabid, an intense music fan, ended up taking over the project, which evolved into a general punk rock fanzine.
In a 1983 Flipside interview, Rabid recalled:
"I'm a genuine fanatic, there's probably a good 3 or 4 or 5 in every city. Just love the music, that's all it is, I love the music. i try to find every record that was ever made, I like making tapes for people to expose them to what they missed. Punk was always creativity to me and expression and it still is to some degree only you have to dig harder.... I just try to support things that I like and those are the things that took time and effort, practice, you know. If you really care then eventually you will make something that is really good".
The title of the fanzine was taken from a Bad Brains song. The first issue was a one-pager, printed front and back, photocopied and given out for free at local punk shows. Stein left the fanzine to Rabid after one issue and Rabid has remained the dominant creative force behind the magazine since.
The Big Takeover moved from the more primitive fanzine style to the black-and-white, stapled magazine style around issue 26 in 1989. During this period, Rabid worked during the day and was still doing most of the writing and all of the layout work and advertising sales. Other notable contributors to the magazine in the early days included former MTV personality Tim Sommer. During the first half of the 1990s, The Big Takeover began using professional layout design, and by the end of the decade, had become a semi-glossy color magazine. Circulation is currently around 15,000.
The Big T usually appears in February, May, August and November, with most recent issues coming in around 200 pages. The review section, featuring Rabid's Top 40 for the issue, is regularly 60-80 pages long. The magazine also features lengthy, in-depth interviews with favorite artists transcribed verbatim, sometimes stretching over two issues. In 2006, the magazine relocated to Brooklyn from the apartment at 249 Eldridge Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan that was home to the magazine for 25 years.
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