Speaking Of Boy Howdy!

Speaking of tits, now's as good a time as any to talk about Grace Slick's left one.

CREEM Magazine used to have a one-page feature every issue called the Star Profile, which was essentially a parody of Dewars print ads, and featured a picture of a different rock star drinking Boy Howdy! brand beer in each issue, accompanied by a short and silly profile of that particular star.

In their January 1975 Star Profile, Creem featured Grace Slick, lead singer of Jefferson Airplane/Starship, standing in a bathroom stall with a can of Boy Howdy at her lips, and her left tit hanging out.

Now, I don't necessarily want to get too sentimental, too maudlin about this, and lord knows you don't really want or need more of my navel-gazing, but I don't believe I'm exaggerating when I say that Grace Slick's left tit changed my life.

I was 9 years old when this particular issue of CREEM hits the newstands, and I dunno if this is hard to believe, but I was reading CREEM at this age, having discovered the magazine in my search for all things KISS, dig?

Nine years old, but Grace Slick's left tit wasn't the first tit I had ever seen in my young life...No, my friends and I had found my dad's Playboy stash, so this was nothing new to me.

However...

Grace Slick's stiff left nipple is the nexus of sex, drugs (Boy Howdy! beer) and rock'n'roll in my own personal consciousness. It is the singular point at which all the hedonistic possibilities of the rock'n'roll lifestyle found definition in young mind. At that moment when I first layed eyes upon Grace Slick's left tit, I absolutely became obsessed with rock music, once and for all time, and it has been the single most important "thing" in my life ever since.

I started collecting records like a mofo (and like my mom), and I tried to become a rockstar myself for a couple of decades, and I drank heavily for a long time, and have experimented with drugs, have enjoyed the groupie dynamic...And I wrote record reviews and essays for my college newsaper, and I've been a DJ at various points in my life, and I do a monthly podcast, and I post a new mp3 every weekend here at HOT POOP, and all of it, the last 30+ years, can be partially (at least) traced directly back to this picture and that moment in 1975.

Oddly enough, I'm more of an "ass man".

Anyways...

Aside from my previous posting of the Sparks' song, "Tits", I was inspired to write this post because Harper Collins just published a rather amazing hardcover coffee table book featuring the best of ye olde CREEM magazine...

An Amazon link

It's 270 big colorful pages loaded with tons of amazing photographs, and all the appropriately hilarious and REAL rock'n'roll journalism (Lester Bangs was an enormous influence on my young mind as well), and at $20, it's truly a MUST for any serious fan of rock music and journalism, especially from the '70's and '80's...Check it out...

Hotcha! Hank