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 and as of 2009^[update], had 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, 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." (It would be Moore's high-quality audience recording of the Cornell 5/8/77 show that led to it becoming a renowned show among Deadheads and its eventual place in the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.)

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.

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.