The Big Takeover

This spring, up in Durham, I discovered a music magazine called The Big Takeover. I bought the most recent edition this weekend up in Asheville. This magazine seems to be the pet project of one Jack Rabid. I bought my first copy this spring because it had Iggy Pop on the cover. The editor interviewed Iggy. It was a fantastic interview. Rabid was intimately familiar with Iggy's career, asked smart questions, allowed Iggy to talk and alloted quite a bit of space to the interview. It also had a large number of reviews in the back. It has the most reviews that I have ever seen in any magazine. Even more than Mojo. They have a unique format for their reviews. The reviews are sorted by reviewer, not by band. This allows reviewers to write about the same albums occasionally, giving the reader different view points. Since this is a 'zine-style publication the reviewers tend to review music they like. There are very few negative reviews. If it's not reviewed, they probably didn't like it. If you like indie and/or alternative music pick up a copy of the Big Takeover the next time you are in a 'cool' book store. It'll keep you entertained for hours.

Last night I decided to make me a Big Takeover mix CD. I sat down in front of the computer for a couple of hours and scanned the reviews and downloaded a song or two from bands that looked interesting. I got a lot of good music and made a 79 minute long CD and listened to about half of on the bus this morning. I think there are a couple of bands that I will have to pursue later. It was a fun project, I actually got more material than I could use. Too bad you can burn more than 80 minutes on a CD. I need an mp3 player with a buttload of memory.