Hey again, Big Takeover readers! Our new Fall issue #63 is coming soon, and details of that are inside. (Subscribers, don’t forget to update your address if you’ve moved!) But first, here’s the latest update on the SPRINGHOUSE East Coast tour we are doing supporting MAGNETIC MORNING starting this Thursday in Chapel Hill, NC, with more info on it, including the new ATLANTA date with FOR AGAINST (Yes!!!!!!!!)!: Click here for full info!
Big Takeover #62 with R.E.M. on the cover is on the stands! Look for it in your favorite store near you that carries good music magazines! Below is a slightly longer description of its contents than what I sent previously, with some good quotes from the issue! Like this one from R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe: “”I think that future generations will look back on this time in American history, it will be as foreign to them as slavery is to us. So I’m 48 now and I’m looking [back]; we were right in the middle of women’s liberation, we’d just come through Civil Rights, and I was in an environmental science course in seventh grade talking about pollution and how we’d gotten into this mess, and how we can easily get out of it with alternative energy sources. And we were going to change the world, and guess what? It didn’t happen!”

IKE TURNER died December 12, reportedly in his sleep. He was 76 years old. Was he a good man? Seems unlikely. Was he a good musician? Hell yeah. The man invented rock ‘n’ roll. Really.

Of course the beauty of music is in the listener’s reaction to how it sounds. Why is this stated like a revelation? Is this also part of the super-saturation of image marketing, identity-politics, fashionable rebellion, and Marxist signifiers?
Over the next three days of SXSW I saw some bands I love repeatedly and caught some for the first time.
It’s odd that a younger generation of consumers is being punished for (and threatened) for exactly—or a very similar—thing that thrived in the repressive JOE MCCARTHY era …
For a true music geek, SXSW is a dream come true. It is all about seeing bands you already love and discovering new ones to love in the future.
The musical portion of my Friday began in late afternoon when I went to the Pop Culture Press party at a pub a short trip from downtown. Ostensibly, I went to meet up with my friend Michael Krumper and to see the Hoodoo Gurus, because Michael and I had seen them together on their first tour of American twenty three years before. To the great credit of the Pop Culture Press people, the lineup of bands playing at the party was outstanding (and the fish and chips weren’t bad either—although someone stole my beer when I set it down and turned my back for a minute.

At some point, those other sleeping giants are going to be awakened by the clamor in the music industry and start to rattle the cages of our imperial federal government. They will demand action and they will get it.

Guitarist Robert Lockwood Jr. was one of the greats of blues, though the general public never seemed to realize it.
Three extremely rare tours by longtime Big Takeover favorites are hitting the U.S., one American, one English, and one Australian. And take it from this writer; you need to see each one of these if you can!
I wouldn’t want to have been his merchandize seller (who we saw being caned by a wobbling Lee after a Town Hall show a few years ago, for transgressions unknown!), or for that matter his drummer or even his towel boy or bartender or banker or drug buddy, but man, being his fan on these last few years’ concert nights felt better than anything.

Last week, Arthur passed away, due to acute myeloid leukemia, in his birthplace of Memphis, Tennessee. Here, I offer my respect to one of music’s all-time greats.

The short answer to the above questions is that BLIND IDIOT GOD made me feel what it might be like to fly in the Millennium Falcon while inside one of its engines… and enjoy it.

On Thursday, famed comedian and actor RED BUTTONS died in Los Angeles after a lengthy struggle with vascular disease. He was 87.