On behalf of all of us here at bigtakeover.com and Big Takeover Magazine, I bid you welcome to our new redesign/relaunch of our site! Looks cool, doesn’t it?
Our print magazine is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, going back to a good 15 years or so before there was any electronic media. So the timing is perfect. Our endeavor has come a long, long way from the days of typing, Xeroxing, reducing, stapling, folding, mailing, shipping, and selling at gigs, and we are celebrating this long three decades of service and commentary in three distinct ways this year.
1) Our new 30th anniversary issue 66, out on the stands, with Spoon on the cover, which includes a long editorial on the history of the magazine and how much things have changed in this field since our beginnings in June of 1980. (Click here to order or subscribe!)
2) A blowout 30th anniversary party & festival, Friday July 30 and 31 at The Bell House in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn. We are amazed to bring you and international lineup of incredible bands/singers who are traveling from New Zealand, England, the West Coast, and throughout the U.S. to help us mark the occasion, namely Mark Burgess (of The Chameleons U.K.), legendary late ‘70s S.F. punk pioneers The Avengers, For Against, my own Springhouse (doing our second LP start to finish), Channel 3, Don McGlashan (Mutton Birds), Jon Auer (Posies/Big Star), Visqueen, The Sleepover Disaster, Steve Drewett (Newtown Neurotics), Flower (reunion), The Sharp Things, Paul Collins, Libertines U.S., EDP, and Curtain Society!
Holy cow! I hope you all can come! Please tell your friends who you think might be interested. It’s a good ways from where a lot of you live I know, but it might be a good excuse for a New York weekend! And it’s easy to buy tickets. Hurry, this may well sell out! (Note the event is 18+)
3) This relaunch of our web site, which should make it an even better resource and go-to stop on the web for all of us who love this music with the passion that we do. Hurrah!
Interestingly, our web site is also 13 years old this year. It was launched by my dear friend Shirley Sexton in 1997, a place to gather information about our magazine and the occasional news item, and in 2004 it was relaunched by Mick Lewis, with a lot of help from Chief Technical Officer Jim Santo and Senior Web Developer Jeremy Amos, as a site based on the work of a dozen bloggers, to deliver more timely news, information, and commentary on the music scene and the larger culture.
Now Jim and Jeremy have overhauled that idea to address the small flaws that they and I, and in many cases you, have pointed out over the last six years. As you can see, there are new, easy-to-navigate categories, such as this one, News, as well as Reviews, Concerts, Interviews, and Top 10s, which combine our great writers instead of keeping all their work separate.
The quality of the content will remain unchanged, but it will be delivered in this much snappier layout, with a greater emphasis on the most recent content, organized to make it easier to find what you are looking for.
Also new is a complete archive of our weekly “Big Takeover on Breakthruradio.com” radio show, as well as our special monthly “Rabid in the Kennel” Breakthruradio.com show where we present great artists live in session and interviewed off the cuff without edit. We are certain you’ll agree this new bigtakeover.com is both the most timely and easy to use of all!
Hope everyone enjoys it!
