Greetings, fellow fans!

Five years. Can you believe it?! This webzine started five years ago. Our first issue ran on January 1, 2000. Holy moly. If you'd told me then that the zine would still be going strong in five years, I would probably have believed you, but only in that "sure, why not?" kind of way. I knew my fanly devotion to the band was strong enough to last that long. But in a real, concrete, "of course we'll still be around then!" kind of way? Hah!

But here we are. It's been about five and a half years since I got that fateful email from Oleg, and talked to him at a concert about the idea. It still seems like yesterday. And now, sixty issues later (sixty! sixty! SIXTY! Geez!), here we are, starting in on a new year. I've met some great people through Red Elvises fandom. Seriously - we Red Elvises fans are a cool bunch, aren't we? Generous, excited about the music, fond of weird things. Awesome.

The original crew of the zine are mostly gone, Jibbs and Opus having had too much stuff going on offline for the kind of time the 'zine requires - though they've left their stamp on the zine in the form of its design and structure. Kayt and Comrade Rick have joined the team, although Kayt has a lot more to do than Rick (Hey, you guys, submit articles so Rick has something to edit, okay?). Kayt handles sorting through all the photos we get, finding the best, resizing them to the right ratio, and so on. Plus she does reports on just about every concert she goes to and handles the Fan of the Month articles. Wow. Hats off to Kayt, people, she works harder on the zine than I do.

We've come a long way, as has the band. Things change, people leave, new people arrive. But the gestalt that is the Red Elvises experience remains the same. Here's hoping that it's still going strong in another five years. 2010, here we come!

Yours in Redness,
Ealasaid

The awesome "5 years!" painting is by the amazing Margarita.