News

Relix Magazine: Grateful, Dead?

5:16 p.m. · February 23, 2009 · by Nick Earhart

If Trey Anastasio rips a solo in a forest and no one is around to write about it in a medium-distribution print format, does he make a sound? Relix Magazine -- not to be confused with a certain other music publication -- has been bought by an unnamed source, following a fiscal downturn and the threat of imminent collapse. Relix started in 1974 as a forum for Grateful Dead obsessives, offering taping strategies and news on bootleg recordings. Through the ‘80s and ‘90s, it stretched out to encompass the budding jam band scene -- one that, for all its contradictions and inherent goofiness, provided opportunities for groups that fell outside the radio mainstream.

It’s debatable whether this situation speaks more to waning relevance of that scene or to the much-discussed time bomb that is print music journalism at large. [Brooklyn Vegan]