The explanation:
Some of the forums I've frequented over the years, I would Ctrl+C some of the things written I found funny or insightful so I could skim through them when I wanted to, so they would not be lost to the sometimes cruelly shifting fortunes of the digital wilderness we call the internet.
I sure did that with the Gutters.
Unfortunately, my puny old PC (well, sort of old by today's standards) went pzzzzzzt last year, and while I was able to salvage some files from the hard drive, I lost almost all of the text files and such, including pretty much every thing Gutters (and The Kingdom, remember the Kingdom?) related.
All but one, one lonely little text file that had ended up in an obscure corner of my computer. Having found it again going through backups...
Perhaps it's not as much of a portrait of the Gutters in 2003 as I hoped but I go with what I have...so without further commentary...and PS I absolutely forgot who wrote this...
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Duckfucking with the Devil
By Kurt Load
Rolling Stone, February 2003
It’s ten minutes till nine on a hot, muggy night in New York. Backstage at the legendary Town Hall, a group of musicians of all sizes and shapes eye each other, each nervously fingering his instrument. “I hear we’re not sold out, is why,” says one, glancing at his comrades as if looking for verification. Another shakes his head. “It’s just one of his moods.” He gazes at a nearby dressing room door, as if by staring at it long enough he can force it to open. On the door is a sign: STAY OUT, YOU FUCKING CUNTS. It remains closed, its instructions followed to the letter. The group lapses into silence, while just beyond the stage stairs a murmuring crowd starts to become restless. “WE WANT THE GUTTERS! WE WANT THE GUTTERS!” At this, the mood of the band becomes more anxious and alarmed. The bass player glances over his shoulder towards the noise, popping a silent E-string. “Man, we are fucked.”
Two minutes till show time. Now the band is positively panicked, shuffling around each other in crazed, desperate orbits. “That fucking nutcase,” the bass player mutters. “That fucking nutcase! He does this every fucking time! Why the fuck do we put up with this?” As if on cue, on the word “this”, the forbidden dressing room door slams open, and a heaving, sweating form bursts through, scattering the musicians like bowling pins with his wrath.
“WHAT ARE YOU FUCKING CUNTS LOOKING AT?” the apparition roars. “IT’S TIME TO FUCKING ROCK!”
With that, Jack Venooker takes the stage. The Gutters follow.
It’s hard to tell how many members are in the Gutters, as its lineup seems to change every few minutes. Indeed, that’s exactly what happens, most nights. It isn’t unusual to see twice the number of necessary musicians hanging around backstage, each confident that he will perform; more often than not, the final lineup depends on the band’s volatile leader and his unpredictable mood swings. “I’ve been on this fucking tour for twenty-five dates,” sighs B. David Harrison, he being the bass player who came this close to mutiny before the show, “and I’ve played only sixteen of them. Sixteen! Otherwise, Bill Hicks gets the gig.” He shakes his burly, bearded head. “I don’t know why I don’t just quit.”
One memorable night in particular, Harrison remembers, he had gotten Venooker’s blessing to debut a song he, B. David, had just written. “I was all freakin’ psyched, and then I made a big fucking mistake.” Harrison’s dreams of rock glory were shattered - or at least temporarily shelved - when he made a wisecrack during one of his leader’s legendary backstage tantrums. “The caterer brought the wrong food,” he recalls, grinning morosely, “and Jack was spittin’ mad about it. He went on and on, screaming at some poor Spanish chick who couldn’t even speak English, and after awhile I got tired of it and told Jack to fuck off already and eat the goddamn tacos or shove ‘em up his ass. He stopped screaming and just stared at me, and then stomped off into his dressing room. A few minutes later Brent [Grenier, the band’s road manager and fill-in drummer] comes and tells me I’m not playing that night, and that Jack said I could shove my new song up my ass.”
He chuckles, then stares off into the distance, wistfully stroking his greasy beard. “Man, that was one good fuckin’ song.”
When asked why he doesn’t indeed quit, Harrison throws up his hands. “I dunno,” he says. “I guess it’s too hard to describe. It’s like, you gotta be there to understand.”
The Gutters sell out shows consistently for perhaps this very reason. It seems likely, since their music is nearly universally panned and their latest release, DOGFUCKSHITMOTHERFUCKER, only made it to seventy-six, and with good reason: it sucks. Nearly every song, all of them written by Venooker as if on some sort of speed-crazed jag, is about child molestation or sexually assaulting women, not exactly ideal subjects for a top ten pop song. Musically, the band is a train wreck: the Gutters ram through every song as if each musician is in a separate studio, guessing at what the others are playing. As the band’s drummer, Jack is so-so, but as its lead singer he’s positively awful. So why do they have such a huge following? “Hey, we’re not that bad,” protests Geedis, the Gutters’ most frequent organist. “We rock! That’s why people come to see us!” When assured repeatedly that the band is indeed inept, tuneless and out of touch, Geedis reluctantly backs down. “Okay, so it’s because of Jack.”
The forbidden dressing room’s door opens, and there he stands. A bit pudgy, balding, with squinty eyes and a remarkably shrill, squeaky voice, Venooker is at first sight an unlikely heir to the hellish throne of rock ‘n’ roll, hardly a threat to memories of Jagger, Rotten, or Reed. Around fifty, Venooker looks like someone’s dad, or maybe a comic book store owner, and indeed he has been both those things. “C’mon in,” he says gruffly, gesturing at a battered folding chair. “You want some tea, or maybe a joint?”
Venooker listens, blinking rapidly, as I recount the reactions of his band concerning the nearly late start of tonight’s show. I tell him that one member’s theory for his refusal to appear was that the show wasn’t sold out (and indeed, the venue was nearly three hundred tickets short). Venooker growls, shaking his gray head. “Those stupid fucks,” he says. “I didn’t come out because I was taking a goddamned SHIT, and when I’m taking a goddamned SHIT I don’t hurry for fucking ANYTHING, so they can just go fuck themselves!” I point out that he has a reputation for canceling shows for no apparent reason, or firing the band without any notice, or delaying his entrance until the crowd is nearly a howling mob. Jack smiles wolfishly. “There are nights where I like to fuck with everybody,” he admits. “But that’s just part of the show. People come to see us to see what I’ll do next, and they fucking LOVE It when I pull shit like throwing tantrums backstage or refuse to come onstage at all. What, do those stupid cunts [the band] think anybody comes to see THEIR sorry asses play?”
And so, more than anything else, a Gutters show is a ritual of cruelty, abuse, and sheer unadulterated chaos, and that is why fans come to see them, and in huge droves. Perhaps the band’s signature stage antic is a favorite ritual known as the infamous “Duckfucker Appreciation Moment”, which is an extraordinarily horrifying display of personal humiliation. One critic has said it must be exactly what public lynchings were once like.
DavidR, or “The Duckfucker” (a sobriquet bestowed upon him reportedly because of an odd, reportedly perverted fixation with cartoon animals) is an odd, unpleasant young man who plays no instruments and yet is considered a member of the band by everyone involved - though not necessarily in a respectful way. He is an insecure, boylike figure with a ton of psychological issues (especially women and sex, neither of which he knows the first thing about), a propensity to bring abuse upon himself, and an inability to ever shut up. It is these last two traits which have made the Duckfucker ritual an eagerly anticipated, and some say necessary, ritual.
What happens every night, in every city, is this: DavidR is ushered onto the stage, often clad in a Charlie Brown zig-zag shirt, looking as if he’s just woken up (which is more often than not true). DavidR gets one chance to sing an original song with the band, after which a vote is taken by the audience as to the song’s quality. If they say it sucks, there are terrible consequences. If it’s any good, then theoretically DavidR will be permitted to sing lead for the rest of the evening. I say “theoretically” because none of DavidR’s songs have yet to be any good.
He shuffles uncertainly to the mike, squinting at the crowd from behind thick-lensed glasses. If it weren’t for his scruffy beard, one might mistake him for a lost seven year-old. “H-hi,” DavidR says, his small voice barely audible through the huge PA speakers. “Um… this is a song I wrote. It’s, um, about this girl I knew who was just a friend, but then I started having feelings for her and I tried to tell her and um, this is what the song is about…” his voice trails off, drowned out by the howling, jeering crowd. “DUCKFUCKER! DUCKFUCKER! DUCKFUCKER!” They want blood. Venooker kicks the band into a droning, monotonous tune that seems to go nowhere, and after coughing nervously a few times, DavidR sings.
He’s terrible. No, more than that - he’s an excruciatingly no-talent, pathetic performer without the first clue about singing. His voice, thin and reedy, flails about wildly in search of a key that doesn’t exist. And as awful as his vocals are, the song itself is even worse: self-pitying, mortifying, pointless, and seemingly endless. The audience, which was screaming and jeering even before DavidR sang one note, is nearly out of control now. Some members of the crowd leap for the stage, their eyes murderous with rage, but the venue’s security holds them back. At least for now.
Finally, excruciating minutes (hours? Days?) later, the Duckfucker finishes his song and steps away from the mike, absurdly bowing, as if he’s just given a bravura performance. The audience is a massive, slavering beast now. Venooker cracks his snare drum piercingly, then grabs his mike. “SO WHAT’S THE WORD, YOU FUCKING CUNTS?” he screams, spit flying out of his mouth and flecking his beard with foam. The crowd roars its anger, and DavidR glances nervously about him, as if he hadn’t expected this - despite the fact that this same ritual has played out night after night for months. “THAT’S IT, THEN!” Jack shouts. “DUCKFUCKER MUST DIE! THE DUCKFUCKER MUST DIE!” The crowd picks up on this chant, deafeningly. On cue, B. David Harrison drops his bass and grabs DavidR by his pathetically thin arms and holds him as the band’s guitarist, K. Thor Jensen, grabs the Duckfucker’s pants and tears them off, dingy underwear and all, until DavidR cowers before the crowd, trembling, naked from the waist down, his dinky, wrinkly wienie nearly impossible to see. “But… but that song wasn’t too bad!” is all he has a chance to say before Jensen, howling with rage, picks him up by the throat and unceremoniously tosses him into the audience, which falls on him like a band of starving wolves. Bleating pitifully, DavidR disappears into the throbbing, blood-crazed mob.
Every fucking night.
“Why do you go through with it?” I ask DavidR later. He looks up at me from under an icepack and stares out from his cracked and bent eyeglasses, uncomprehending. He’s a mess. Bloody, bruised, still pantsless and even uglier than before, the Duckfucker is not a pleasant sight. “What?” he asks, his voice completely absent of any malice or anger. “It’s good for me, ‘cause it’s like therapy, because it gets me in front of a crowd, which gives me experience. Plus, I figure one of these days they’ll have to like one of my songs, right?” Uh… right.
“He fucking deserves it.” B. David Harrison slams down another slug of cheap beer, then wipes his frothy lips with a meaty hand. “His songs suck, they’re pathetic, he’s pathetic. We don’t make him go out there, y’know; he practically begs us. I mean, basically he’s a good kid, but a greater fuck-up I’ve never met.”
K. Thor Jensen is not quite as nice about it. “The only reason I stay with this horrible, shitty band is that one night that little Duckfucker cunt won’t come out of that audience alive, and I’ll be there to see it. I fucking mean that.”
As for the malevolent mind behind all this, Venooker merely smiles when the Duckfucker is mentioned. “David’s all right, he’s a good boy. Does what he’s told.” An evil gleam appears behind one squinty eye.
The Gutters play on, night after night, despite their leader’s unpredictable and volatile temper; despite the many legal tangles (it is said that Venooker files suit against someone at least once a day); and despite numerous setbacks such as a falling out with their former manager, Rick Veitch (who refused to be interviewed for this article); and despite no hope of ever making any kind of musical or artistic impact whatsoever. None of this seems to bother Venooker all that much. He leans back in his chair inside the forbidden dressing room, eyes closed, listening to the muffled noise of an audience who has waited nearly an hour past show time for the Gutters to begin. Venooker opens one eye and grins, his puffy face looking unnervingly Satanic.
“It’s good to be the King,” he says gruffly, and chuckles.
