The Guttersluts were a legendary band out of the Los Altos Hills punk scene in California at the precipice of the grunge movement in 1988, that started actually as a fictional band formed by DJ’s at KFC 88’7 FM that came together and brought the band to life as a real band for five years.
“The Guttersluts were and all-girl punk band formed in 1988 by five female DJs at KFJC, a well-known college radio station in Los Altos Hills, California. We were fronted by Suzanne von Slut on vocals, with Alison Wonderslam on guitar, Jillstar Starchyle Slut on bass, Jessica Madonna de la Slut on Farfisa and tami Teener McSlut on drums,” said Tami.
“Tami and Hell’n (another KFJC DJ) had an idea one day to record a promotional spot for the station as a fictitious band. We invited Suzanne, Jill, and Alison into the production booth to scream “Hey foxy, we’re The Guttersluts, and when we’re in Los Altos Hills, we listen to KFJC 89.7 FM.” There was a giant belch at the end plus a loud feral scream. We picked the name “The Guttersluts” because it was the most outrageous name we could think of for an all-girl band. As you can imagine, the spot became a favorite with other DJs at the station, who were in on the joke. The ruse just continued from there, as we decided to make a T-shirt for the fictitious band with a skeleton hand grabbing a boob. We would wear the T-shirts to shows, and we got a huge response from people wanting to know more about the band. Then listeners started calling the station to request nonexistent music from our nonexistent band, and so we decided it would be fun to record a song for radio play. Hell’n would be the singer for our first song, which was a cover of the Honeycomb cereal commercial mashed up with psychedelic shack. Alison played both guitar and bass, so she did both parts. Tami had a natural knack for drums, and so she played DJ Stretch’s kit in the back of Streetlight Records in San Jose, where we recorded it as a 3-piece in one day. Obviously, the song became a #1 hit at KFJC, and everyone played the track repeatedly. We never revealed that we were DJs from the station, and so listeners thought we were a new and upcoming girl band – which we eventually became as we took the next step: live performance. For our first show, we were asked to play at the Louie Louie for Leukemia charity parade in San Francisco to celebrate the song with Richard Berry himself. Hell’n didn’t want to sing in front of people, so she bailed out. Suzanne bravely stepped up for lead vocals and also provided a small drum set for Tami to play. We enlisted Jill as our bass player, so she bought a second-hand bass. We rounded out the band with the addition of Jessica, another KFJC DJ who also happened to play piano. Eventually, we would bring in a Farfisa that Alison found in the basement of her apartment, but at this point we used a little toy Yamaha keyboard and practiced daily til we could pull off that one song live as a “band” for the parade. After the successful parade day, we walked into the bar across the street and the whole place started chanting “Sluts, Sluts, Sluts!” Naturally, we decided that playing music was fun and we should keep doing it.”
“Suzanne started writing these amazing lyrics from the beginning. We would all just hang out in our friends’ living room jamming, and Alison or Jessica would start playing a riff or melody and Suzanne would open up her notebook of lyrics and just start singing over the melody. This is how we wrote most of our songs at first. Sometimes we would even swap instruments for inspiration. This was how we wrote “Housewife from Hillsdale,” which was based on a true story. Alison was playing around on the drums and Tami had the guitar; Jessica was on bass and Jill on keyboards. Since nobody really knew how to play any of their assigned instruments, it was fun just to play around. Suzanne already had the story lyrics in her notebook and just sang along to the swirling mess of sounds. We recorded what we were doing and were surprised that we had something we could turn into “Housewife.” We also liked to experiment with toy instruments, like the slide whistle or a Fisher Price xylophone. Overall, the idea was just to have fun with our friends. We were inspired by all kinds of music, from punk, traditional country, and classic rock to pop-culture phenomenons like the Partridge Family, the Monkees, Cher, and Spinal Tap.”
And speaking about their inspiration from the Spinal Tap movie, Tami said, “Our most memorable performance was when we had David Kaffinetti, who played Viv Savage in This Is Spinal Tap, join us onstage for our show opening for Redd Kross. He sat in for the whole show and we played three Spinal Tap songs with him. It was absolutely EPIC! Our favorite saying was a motto borrowed from Spinal Tap’s Viv Savage: “Have a good time all the time.” We were just trying to have fun with our friends and hopefully entertain people and make them smile for a little while. The vibe was always positive and fun.”
Our biggest accomplishment is probably that we were asked to do a tour with Neil Young & Crazy Horse. They were planning on doing a run of small club shows, and Neil Young invited us to come up to his ranch and play for him. Unfortunately, the tour didn’t end up happening due to illness in his family, but the legend lives on.”
“Our shows were always rockin’ and fun. Suzanne would bring lots of instruments that she would decorate, such as the Fisher Price xylophone and the slide whistle. She used to bring a box of Honeycomb cereal to throw into the crowd during the “Honeycomb” song (until the club owners banned us from doing that). She would also read from a Dr. Seuss book during “Dr. Seuss is Satan.” During “Twister,” she would pick someone in the crowd to spin a Twister spinner during the spoken-word part of the song. We also had a song called “Siren Boy,” where we’d pick a guy to wear this fire helmet with a siren on top. Jessica played her smaller keyboard on top of a Suzanne-decorated ironing board that we borrowed from our DJ friend Big Myke, who let us practice in his family room where it lived. Alison and Jill were always holding down the rock poses in front, and Tami was hair flipping like Animal from the Muppets on drums.”
The mystique of the Guttersluts grew and the girls were living a dream come true! “It was like a dream come true. At that time, the music scene in San Jose and the Bay Area was really thriving! We had lots of encouragement from the community to keep playing. The local newspapers would write articles about us since we were an all-girl band and our schtick was unique. Someone once wrote we were “the greatest girl group to ever come out of Los Altos Hills” (a tiny town), which we thought was so funny (as clearly there was no competition for the title). When we weren’t playing a gig, we were usually out on the town watching our friends’ bands play downtown San Jose – First Street had a whole row of clubs. Back in those days, we would post Suzanne’s super-creative flyers everywhere to get the word out about gigs. Lots of indie bands would come through San Jose to play, and we would be so excited when we were asked to open for them. Also, other bands in the scene were really supportive – like the Spit Muffins, with whom we did our first San Jose show (the cover price was a roll of toilet paper for the “venue”), and the Mummies, whose singer Trent would help us when the picky Farfisa needed heavy-duty attention. The only bummer was that sometimes too much emphasis was placed on the so-called novelty of being a “girl band,” as if people were surprised we could hold our instruments, let alone comprehend live sound. It was also annoying to be asked in literally every interview, “What’s it like being in an all-girl band?!”
The Guttersluts released an Anthology of their music which is available online. One of their featured tracks is a song called Smells Like Godzilla, which was inspired by Nirvanna’s Smells Like Teen Spirit and Blue Oyster Cult’s Godzilla. “This was an idea from Doug, another KFJC DJ, one of our part-time amateur roadies, and Jessica’s boyfriend at the time (now going on 37 years). Doug said he heard a similarity in the chord changes of Nirvana’s “Smells like Teen Spirit” and Blue Oyster Cult’s “Godzilla.” We were really into Nirvana at the time, being that we had been the DJs who’d rallied around their first album Bleach on KFJC, and we were excited about Nevermind, which had just come out. We had no idea at the time that Nirvana was going to blow up like they did. We just liked “Teen Spirit” and decided to do a fun mashup of the two songs. Just recently, someone did a mash up of our mash up with the original songs and put it on YouTube. It’s really cool.”
The band did have to take a hiatis due to turnover in the group. “Unfortunately, our guitar player Alison left the band when she moved to Australia in 1992. Tami also had to have surgery on her wrist that stopped her from drumming for a while. We took a hiatus at that time and weren’t planning on playing again, but a gentleman at KFJC who played guitar and wrote songs said he wanted to work with us – and that’s when the late Sir John Thomas Vanderslut joined our reformed band. We recorded a bunch of his tunes, which are on Something Doesn’t Smell Right, the collection we self-released after our first, Anthology. We played several shows with him before disbanding.”
While the Guttersluts may have been overlooked because of the way they came together more as friends than as a band, they did create something special with their music, energy and performances. “Maybe people overlooked that we started first as friends and the band just kinda happened from a joke that was for our own entertainment – and at nobody else’s expense. Also, a lot of people didn’t realize that some of us could actually play our instruments from the get-go — and all of us could play pretty well after our wacky start.”
The Guttersluts did get back together for a reunion show in 2009 and who knows maybe will have another one in the future. “You never know. The last reunion we did was in 2009, when a bunch of local bands from the old scene got together to do a reunion for Marsugi’s that was also a birthday celebration for San Jose journalist Gary Singh. Marsugi’s was San Jose’s seminal (and tiny) punk/indie club – it’s where we had our first real gig, opening for L7 and Catbutt in 1989. We all have fond memories of that club, and the reunion was a blast! We would really like to write a book, screenplay, documentary, or musical about The Guttersluts.”
