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The Yummy Biker and I have quite a collection of EasyRider magazines...not only the pathetic ones from the 'Eighties on, but the oh Jesus, zits and tits, low-rent EasyRiders, starting at issue #2. (Anyone out there have an ish #1 they'd like to part with? Even if its 'Riders UK, let me know in the comments and we'll do the email thing.)

This magazine had its' moments, and some moments were pure class, but it was never cool the way, say, underground comix were cool. EasyRiders was cool the way sleazy sideshow crap is cool...because it was fuck-you tasteless. For the times and the place it was pretty extreme. Sagging boobs, aging snatch, whiskey and beer, quaaludes, sodomy, needle tracks, white trash-sister humping-stuff. All the iron was Ameripean, all the women were nymphomaniacs and all the men were balldragging studs, of course.

Now all this romance existed primarily in the minds of two staffers- Spider, and 'Bandit' aka K. Randall Ball. The two of them also did about half of the writing in the early issues. Yes, Virginia, that includes the letters. (No! No! you mean to tell me that THE LETTERS IN EASYRIDERS WERE FAKED????? I know somebody who got their letter published in WordMonger though! My uncle! When he was in prison! etc.) To be fair, by the late 'Seventies much of the content came from outside submissions. Now, were those writers actual bike people?

Hmm. Are bears catholic? Does the pope shit in the woods?

Anyway, nobody cared. As far as the readership were concerned, this magazine defined THE SCENE. Bike people ate it up whole, without question, like it was candy. Really disgusting shit flavored candy with funky hairs and cockroach parts stuck all in it. Ate. It. Up.
I know I did.
Yep.

Of course, I was 17 and I had NO GODDAMN SENSE.*

We cycle these vintage issues through our throne room reading rack about once every year or so and surprisingly they just get better with age.
In an Ed Wood kind of way.

FROM THE WALLS: NOTES FROM LOCKED DOWN BROTHERS AND SISTERSMOUNT UP, LADIES! For one massive Aryan warrior" I'm 24, 5'9", 170 lbs,. and built to last! Free in three years, and seeking the pale, lusting flesh of an Aryan slam pig. No other forms of inferior scum need reply. Xxxxxxx Xxxx Box 1xx, So. Walpole, MA 02071

TENNESSEE "WHITE" HEADED PECKERWOOD: Slammed down in the blue grass. I'm 37, 5'6", and 175 lbs. of all-beef Tennessee pride. Would like to kick it with some of you fine "white" soft-tails. Steve "Hardluck" Wallace, #xxxxxx-ek, Dorm 1xxx Eastern Kentucky Corr. Complex, Box xxx, West Liberty, KY xxxxx

ITTY-BITTY-TITTY-LOVER down in a gator country prison, looking for a sweet or sour slut for life. I'm 38, 6'1", 250 lbs., have tats and operating Pan. Due out in '94. Write: Dennis "McNasty" McCarthy, xxxxxx-xx hamilton Corr. Institution, P.O. Box xxxx, Vasper, FL xxxxx

Now I wonder if any of these gentlemen ever found what they were looking for via the medium of these ads. Certainly the prospect of being somebody's' slam pig would rouse the tender feelings in any womans' soul.

MIRACULOUS MUTHA TELLS ALL!
Soup Kitchen
Listen up, bitch, because I've ben thinkin' about it, and I've got some plans for you and me. First, I want to give you an enema with a whole can of Campbell's Beef Chunky Style soup. Second, I want you to squat over my face and wrap your purple tongue around the scabs on my rock-hard crank. Third, when I'm about to blast a nut down your throat, I want to spread the crack of your flea-infested ass and have ya let loose with the Chunky Beef while screamin' at the top of your lungs "I've lost my baby! I've lost my baby!"
So what's the deal, bitch? Is is a date or what?
Wargasm
Walpole, Mass.

Hark; the iniminable literary voice of the notorious K. Randall Ball aka 'Bandit'.
Despite my best efforts, I could not convince Wyndham Triffid that Bandits' obvious talents rated him a place on the Triffid vacation reading list, and to this day I feel that was an unfair snub. Any fool can see the sheer magic which seeps from every lax, varicose orifice of Mr. Ball's prose. Well, you can.

INDIAN RITUAL: A SECOND-GENERATION BIKER PLUCKS A NEW FEATHER FOR THE FAMILY BONNET
(intro to article) Ya ever notice how some bros seem to have all the luck when it comes to finding restorable classic scoots? Me, I can't find my own asshole in the dark with both hands and a flashlight, much less hit a jackpot cache like this leg-wettin '47 Chief. But when ya get down to the actual factuals, as my uncle Zeke useta say, luck don't count for squat in this game. Instead, the cats who unearth these spoked gems from America's motor lode owe their "luck" to serious, unrelenting perseverance..." and it continues.

On and on.

Here's a selection of Biker Mama Poetry. The original was illustrated** evocatively with a tender hand, a keen eye and a prosthetic foot by one Clark Calhoun, a man who knows his way around a womans' ass in a pair of cut offs:
THE BITCH ( I swear to you I am not making this up.)
She stands at the walls
and silently smiles.
She's packed a
hundred thousand
miles.
Seen 'em rise
and seen 'em fall,
the Bitch has fuckin' seen it all.
Packed behind some righteous bros,
laid 'em down
and let 'em go.
Polished chrome
throughout the night.
Dared some bitch
to pick a fight.
Ran for beers
and opened cans.
Did it all
to please that man.
Sewed the patches,
cooked his meals.
And dummied up
about the bills.
She loves every
moment living wild,
on the road,
Harley-style.
Jenny

And really, isn't that what its all about?

If I read of, or hear of, another oldschool biker lamenting how 'his bros' have been co-opted by the straight world I will flat fucking vomit. Those dipshits embraced the stereotype. Now they're crying about all the lames. Oh wah, the middle-management castrati are out riding SuperGlides, playing biker with their HOG rockers, wanting to buy some of that oldschool brand of BADASS. Well what the fuck did the fools expect; with all that lame shit out there defining the experience?

Adding further insult to injury, the preceding selections were not from EasyRider magazine proper, but what it became post-Guccione as it tottered along weakly, still dressed in its as-yet-unwashed 1971 bell bottoms: Biker Magazine.

Circa 1993.








* Although even then, I must admit to my credit, I figured it was bullshit. But hand it to 'em; they had the best rank jokes going, plus they showed full frontal.
Why yes, I have been a sick woman for a VERY long time indeed.
**oh how i wish i could get it to print.