For a child star who got his roots in the “Home Alone” series, you’d never expect Macaulay Culkin to tell a crowd at his band’s sold-out D.C. show that they were giving him a hard on.
But then again, nothing about the Pizza Underground – the five member pizza-themed Velvet Underground cover band spearheaded by Culkin – could be anticipated.
Not the German tambourine player telling jokes about the gynecologist, the Kurt Cobain impersonator singing Nirvana songs in the past tense (“yesterday I found my friends, they were in my head”), or the bizarre, nonsensical interludes of cat images set to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” and dancers sporting kitty ears and #PussyJoel T-shirts.
Most of all, nobody could anticipate the band to have a sound so scarily similar to the Velvet Underground or to, surprisingly, not suck. The single electric guitar, tambourine and keyboard were sparse and minimal, a definitive nod to the Velvet Underground’s classic ’60s rock vibe.
The only true departure was the complete lyrical rearrangement to suit the pizza-themed affair: new lyrics include “Papa John says/ when answering the phone/ why give half your pie/ to toppings you don’t like.”
With their black leather jackets and Raybans, they performed punny, if not mildly monotonous and jangly covers of “I’m Waiting for the (Delivery) Man,” and “Cheese Days.”
When Culkin brought out his miniature kazoo trumpet and Deenah, the drummer of pizza boxes, began their rousing chorus of “Take A Bite of the Wild Slice,” it seemed like nothing else mattered but this attempt to preserve some semblance of Velvet Underground culture.
Their show at the Black Cat on March 21 was the band’s twelfth show of the year following a string of performances in New York and California.
The only question left to ponder, really, is what would Lou think?
