Eric Clapton and Jerry Garcia are on a plane over the South Pacific when it develops engine failure and crashes on an uncharted island. Clapton and Garcia survive but are captured by cannibals. As the tribe fires up the big pot, the chief goes to his captives and asks Garcia if he has any last requests. Garcia says, "Could I have my guitar? I just wanna jam on 'Dark Star' one last time." The chief then asks Clapton if he has a last request. Clapton says, "Eat me, now."

That joke was a lot funnier before Jerry died.

Unlike many of my friends, I've never been a fan of the Grateful Dead. They were, without a doubt, a great band, and one can't help but admire their musicianship, longevity, stamina and (sorry, hippies) business acumen—there are Fortune 500 companies who would kill for the Dead's brand identification. They made a great deal of music and much of it was quite good, especially the stuff on the quintessential albums American Beauty and Workingman's Dead. Jerry Garcia was a gifted multi-instrumentalist, both in the Dead and in his numerous side projects (I'm pretty fond of the work Garcia did with mandolin hero David Grisman). But I've never been able to get behind the band. I don't particularly care for jam bands, first of all—I don't care how good you are, after 30 seconds a solo becomes just self-indulgent noodling. Secondly, while I support any obsession that doesn't involve children or barnyard animals, the sheer quasi-religious mania of some Deadheads, even 15 years after Garcia's passing and the band's breakup, is startling and often disturbing even to other Dead fans.

Still, 30 years of constant recording and touring is nothing to sneeze at and there is no end of documentation of the Grateful Dead's career. Besides the official recordings, merchandise and books by the ton, the band's committed fan base created an endless well of unofficial material, especially bootleg tapes, which the band cheerfully accepted as part of the cost of doing business with their particular audience. Fan tapes of Dead shows circulated among the network almost virally, with aficionados poring over and comparing shows like Talmudic scholars. It wasn't long before the network began to organize, and that's where Relix magazine came in. Initially the first newsletter to serve as a trading post for tapers, in 1973 the rag quickly became a fanzine for Deadheads to submit their (often hazy) recollections of shows, art, poetry and other appreciations of the band and for the editors to post grapevine news on the doings of the Dead.

Shortly after Relix went regular, however, the Dead announced that they were going on hiatus. Left without any Dead news to report, the magazine turned to reporting on other bands on the San Francisco/hippie/jam-band axis (Hot Tuna, Jefferson Starship), and the fanzine turned into a full-fledged music magazine, which is still on the newsstands today. Though Relix's focus has broadened considerably (including reportage of new wave artists during the '80s, which outraged the Dead fan base), the magazine remained steadfast in its coverage of the Dead, its spinoff projects and its direct descendants like Phish and Widespread Panic.

Longtime Relix editor Toni Brown has collected and distilled the best of the magazine's Dead reportage into a new collection called Relix, the Book: The Grateful Dead Experience (Hal Leonard Books, 2009), from its humble, amateurish origins to the slick production of its later years. For non-Deadheads like myself, it's an interesting look at the Dead phenomenon from the fan's-eye point of view. Unlike most of the books out there by rock historians, Brown's book reproduces the pages of the magazine and gives a warts-and-all look at both the staff's work and the contributions of road warriors and fellow travelers, producing a time-capsule effect that is both fascinating and often wince-inducing.

Fans will, of course, gobble this up, as well they should. All of the primary players are interviewed, including elusive lyricist Robert Hunter, at the various stages of the Dead's career, and it's interesting to see how the band evolved through their experiences. Garcia naturally gets a lot of coverage, both in life and death, but oddly enough, there is no mention of either his diabetes or his heroin use, both of which contributed to his demise. Maybe the fans didn't know or didn't want to know, but it's their forum.

Scattered here and there are occasional stray articles, a piece on Stevie Ray Vaughn here, a remembrance of John Lennon there, and a gallery of Relix covers that tease at the other artists that we may see if the magazine's editors decide to publish future retrospectives, but this volume is all about the Dead, an engaging piece of musical history for those of us outside the cosmic circle, an indispensable treasure for those inside.

Speaking of '70s Psychedelic Ephemera: Local musician and Krush Girl Dan Donahue has just released the first book to chronicle the marvels of the '60s and '70s blacklight poster phenomenon: Ultraviolet (Abrams, 2009). A collection of 69 fluorescent stand-outs, the DayGlo eye-candy includes images of sex, drugs and rock and roll, of course, as well as Earth awareness, Black Power and astrology. [Cotter]

On the Other Side of the Universe from the Galaxy of Deadheaddom: New York Times columnist and man of letters William Safire succumbed at the age of 79 to pancreatic cancer last month. A former speechwriter for President Nixon and longtime gadfly for the right, Safire was a tireless journalist, gifted novelist and a warrior for the proper use of the English language. Though I may not have agreed with most of his views, Safire was a necessary figure in the national debate, a voice of reason and eloquence amid an ever-widening field of bombastic know-nothings, and he will be missed.

John G. Nettles