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The Big Takeover is a bi-annual music magazine published out of New York City since 1980 by critic Jack Rabid, with the considerable help of dozens of staffers, interns, contributors, and volunteers. The Big Takeover usually appears in June and December, with most recent issues coming in around 200 glossy pages. The review section, featuring Jack’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.
The Big Takeover recently relocated to Brooklyn from the Lower East Side NYC apartment that was its home for 25 years, highlighted by its special 30th anniversary festival at Brooklyn’s Bell House club, July 30-31, 2010 (with The Chameleons’ Mark Burgess, The Avengers, For Against, Springhouse, Channel 3, Visqueen, Sleepover Disaster, The Sharp Things, Don McGlashan of Mutton Birds, Libertines U.S., Jon Auer of The Posies, Steve Drewett of Newtown Neurotics, EDP, Flower, Paul Collins, and Curtain Society.
New York’s Jack Rabid is best known as the editor and publisher since June of 1980 of the semi-annual music magazine The Big Takeover — first as a photocopied ‘zine and today as a thick, glossy magazine, filled with reviews and interviews with the biggest independent and alternative bands and artists on the scene today — as well as his freelance work for Spin, AllMusicGuide, eMusic, and Amp (having regularly contributed in the past to Village Voice, Interview, Trouser Press Guide, Alternative Press, Creem, Paper (online), Rockpool, Ice, Musichound, Stereotype, Maximum Rock n Roll, East Village Eye, CD Now, Jam TV, Hit List, Generation, and more).
He also has plenty of radio experience, as the host for two years of “Big Takeover on Breakthruradio.com” and its offshoot program for the station, the live-in-the-studio-sessions program Rabid in the Kennel, and in the past via stints for Lafayette College’s WJRH and New York University’s WNYU (hosting “The New Afternoon Show” and the game show, “Pop Quiz”), as well as weekly spots on the nationally syndicated “Music View”, Vancouver’s “The Joe Show”, and Cincinnati’s WOXY.
In the clubs, he’s DJed hundreds of punk and indie rock gigs in Manhattan going back to 1979, including the ‘80s-infamous weekly “Rock Hotel” punk rock series. He also is the drummer and occasional vocalist for recently reunited early ‘90s shoegaze-dreampop band Springhouse (three albums, two on Caroline Records), having also drummed for early ‘80s punks Even Worse (one album), ’00s post-punk group Last Burning Embers (one album), and a mid’80s touring lineup of Los Angeles’s SST-signed Leaving Trains (one album).
Jack lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn with his wife Mary and his son Jim.