Relix, originally and occasionally later Dead Relix, is a magazine that focuses on live and improvisational music. The magazine was launched in 1974 as a handmade newsletter devoted to connecting people who recorded Grateful Dead concerts. It rapidly expanded into a music magazine covering a wide number of artists. It is the second-longest continuously published music magazine in the United States after Rolling Stone. The magazine is published eight times a year. The magazine has a circulation of 102,000. Peter Shapiro currently serves as the magazine’s publisher and Dean Budnick and Mike Greenhaus currently serve as Editor-in-Chief.
Les Kippel, a native of Brooklyn, was the founder of the First Free Underground Grateful Dead Tape Exchange in 1971 that recorded and traded live Grateful Dead concert tapes for free. As the popularity of trading live concerts on tape increased, a practice the Grateful Dead allowed and ultimately encouraged, Kippel realized that he needed to get a more streamlined method of getting tapers together to trade.
Jerry Moore (1953–2009), a native of The Bronx who attended Lehman College,[4] was another early taper and trader who, in the later words of Grateful Dead historian David Gans, was “almost a stereotype of the poetic Irish soul but with a bit of a psychedelic edge to his tone.”
The first issue of Relix:
Kippel and Moore connected through local New York-area Dead clubs and co-founded a newsletter to help his fellow tape-traders connect with each other. Jerry Moore became the first editor-in-chief of the new publication, called Dead Relix.
The first issue was released in September 1974 with an initial print run of 200. Kippel allowed a friend, who taught printing in a high school printing shop to ‘use’ Dead Relix to teach printing to the students.
The first issue featured a black and white drawing of a large skull in the center with a horned, winged creature below it and marijuana leaves sprouting around it. On the upper left it says: “Dedicated to the memory of the world’s sneakiest tape collector—Tricky Dicky” (a reference to the then-culminating impeachment process against Richard Nixon). The issue cost $1.25. With only 50 initial subscribers, Kippel printed 200 copies. However, once word spread of the magazine, subscriptions rose quickly.
The first issue was released shortly after the Grateful Dead announced a hiatus. The timing was auspicious as Dead Relix now became the only way for Deadheads, who frequently only saw each other on tour with the band, to stay in touch and up-to-date with band and its members’ happenings. The group’s hiatus also created the opportunity for Dead Relix to broaden its coverage as it came to include other Dead-esque bands on the San Francisco scene like New Riders of the Purple Sage, Commander Cody and Hot Tuna.
More early Relix magazines:
Jerry Moore left the magazine in 1977, but in later years resurfaced as a presence in the East Coast scene until his death in 2009.
In 1978, Relix underwent a major transition that propelled it from more of a newsletter to a true magazine. The change started with a new editor, Jeff Tamarkin, who held that position during 1978 and 1979.[8] Tamarkin had bigger plans for Relix. He felt it needed to branch out and he wanted to broaden the coverage to include more different types of music—punk, metal, new wave, even pop. Kippel gave him free rein to expand as he wanted. Dead was dropped from the title and the subject matter changed dramatically.[9] The result was a greater readership and many angry Deadheads. Kippel attempted to appease the worries of Relix’s longtime supporters in a letter from the publisher in the Jan/Feb 1979 issue. He wrote:
The key to all this is that as people who live for and by music, we should see and listen to other music, and that is the purpose and function of RELIX: to be the eyes and ears for our readers, and to report back and show and tell you, our readers what’s going on around the music scene WITH AN OPEN MIND and we at RELIX do hope that you, our readers, will have an open mind for music.
In 1979, the Blues Brothers, The Who, and even Blondie appeared on the cover. However, the Grateful Dead were never too far removed from Relix as pictures and interviews with the Dead still appeared in the magazine just with less frequency. Tamarkin’s tenure with Relix was brief, lasting only two years (today, he remains a contributing editor). His replacement was Toni Brown.[8] While Brown appreciated Tamarkin’s adjustments to the magazine, she recognized that Relix was straying from its Deadhead roots. Her first act was to put “Dead” back into the title although it appeared in small print above the “R” in Relix. Brown, who married Kippel in 1980, took his job as publisher and assumed full responsibility over the future of the magazine.
When the Grateful Dead released In the Dark in 1987, the band’s popularity grew exponentially with the help of radio airplay and “Touch of Grey” becoming the group’s first song to chart. It played sold-out stadiums. The media became more involved with the Grateful Dead scene as did the police and the government’s Drug Enforcement Administration. Deadheads were targeted for drug use and gained something of a negative reputation. Relix recognized the profiling and tried to educate Deadheads about how to avoid the police and what to bring (and not bring) with you to shows.
The official webite of Relix today:
To keep the magazine profitable, Kippel began dealing an array of collectibles geared towards Relix readers. This prompted him to create a merchandising divisions of the Relix company called Rockin’ Relix/[9] Relix International. This led to many ties in the music merchandise world and Kippel gained connections all over the music scene. Kippel started a record company which he called Relix Records[9] in 1980, after prompting to do so from Grateful Dead lyricist, Robert Hunter. Now, the Relix corporation was flourishing. Relix kept close ties with the record stores that were buying their magazines, merchandise, and now, the albums of the artists it represented. Relix records existed for 20 years and released over 120 records including many magazine favorites, such as Jorma Kaukonen, Hot Tuna, Free Grass Union,[10] the New Riders of the Purple Sage, Wavy Gravy, Commander Cody and many more. Brown also created a forum in the magazine for readers to correspond with incarcerated Deadheads, many who were convicted of non-violent drug offences. (wikipedia)
And here´s another issue (36 pages) from my archive of Rock magazines:
The back of this magazine:
More from Relix in this blog:
Another item from my magazine archive:
Another item from my magazine archive:
focus on the Grateful Dead, but also found room to cover genres as divergent as blues, reggae, bluegrass and jazz, and non-music issues such as mandatory minimum drug laws. It was during the late ’80s to mid-’90s that Relix established its reputation as a magazine that “broke” new acts. With the keen ear of British-born writer Mick Skidmore, many new and emerging bands made their debut in Relix columns such as Independents Daze and On The Edge.
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