Jimmy and the Slut Puppies

Successful rock band from the 2002 novel Basket Case by Carl Hiaasen. Fronted by Jimmy Stoma, the stage name of James Bradley Stomarti.

I sit at my desk and scroll through the computer files that inform me in colorful bits and pieces about the life of Jan,es Bradley Stomarti, better known to the world as Jimmy Stoma.

That's right. The Jimmy Stoma.

As in Jimmy and the Slut Puppies.

Stashed somewhere in my apartment is one of their early albums, Reptiles and Amphibians of North America. Jimmy sang lead and sometimes played rhythm guitar. He also fooled around with the harmonica. l remember really liking one of the band's singles, "Basket Case," off an album called Floating Hospice. That one I lost to a departing girlfriend. Jimmy was no Don Henley, but the ladies found him very easy on the eyes. The guy could carry a tune, too.

Stoma also got arrested on a regular basis, and was unfailingly booked under his given name. That's how I got the computer to hit on "James Bradley Stomarti."

...

From the morgue: December 13, 1984: With Steven Tyler, John Entwistle and Joan Jett in attendance, Jimmy Stoma marries a chorine turned professional wrestler in Las Vegas. He is arrested later that evening for urinating on Englebert Humperdinck's stretch limousine.

February 14, 1986: Mrs. Stoma flits for divorce, alleging her husband is addicted to alcohol, cocaine -and aberrant sex. The Slut Puppies open a three night stint at Madison Square Garden, and from the stage Jimmy introduces his new girlfriend, a performance artist who goes by the name or Mademoiselle Squirt.

May 14, 1986: Stoma is arrested for indecent exposure during a Charlotte, North Carolina concert in which he takes an encore wearing nothing but a Day-Glo condom and a rubber Halloween mask in the likeness of the Rev. Pat Robertson.

January 19, 1987: With the Slut Puppies' fourth album, A Painful Burning Sensation, poised to go triple platinum, Jimmy Stoma announces he is canceling the band's long-awaited tour. Insiders say the singer is self-conscious about his weight, which has inflated to 247 pounds since he gave up cocaine. Stoma insists he's simply taking a break from live performing to work on "serious studio projects."

November 5, 1987: Jimmy Stoma is arrested in Scottsdale, Arizona, after punching a People magazine photographer who had tailed him to the gates of Gila Springs Ranch, an exclusive spa specializing in holistic crash-dietary programs.

November 11, 1987: For the second time in a week, Stoma is busted, this time for shoplifting a bundt cake and two chocolate eclairs from a downtown Phoenix bakery.

February,5, 1989: Stoma and an unidentified woman are injured when his waterbike crashes into the SS Norway in the Port of Miami. The collision causes no damage to the cruise ship. but surgeons say it might be months before Stoma can play the guitar again.

September 25, 1991: Stoma's first solo album, Stomatose, is panned by both Spin and Rolling Stone. After debuting at number 22 on the a Billboard pop charts, it plummets within two weeks to number 97 before-

Hiaasen actually commissioned lyrics for "Basket Case from his friend, real musician Warren Zevon, who recorded the song for his 2002 album, My Ride's Here.

External Links

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk8SpJ9fHxg