It’s that time of year again. When at least once (or twice) families and movie fans alike sit back and fire up their annual viewing of the iconic 1990 movie, Home Alone. You know—the one where Macaulay Culkin plays Kevin McCallister, a kid left home alone by his parents during the holidays, only to fend off two bumbling burglars with micromachine toys and torches?
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Well, given that many of us are remembering the actorly accomplishments of young Culkin, who was amazingly just 10 years old at the time, it’s also a good moment to remember another of his creative achievements—his pizza-themed The Velvet Underground cover band, The Pizza Underground.
[RELATED: 5 American Bands Who Did British Invasion-Style Music as Well as the Brits]
Child Actor
In a 2018 interview on Ellen, Culkin talked about being a child actor and the difficulties that can create for any person. Then, after stopping acting at 14, he got a slip of paper passed to him with lots of money written on it. As such, he said, he realized he could treat his many endeavors as hobbies, not necessarily as do-or-die creative projects to make a living.
This led him to several opportunities, including The Pizza Underground, which started in 2013. The band parodied songs by the Velvet Underground, replacing some of the lyrics with pizza-related ones. Along with Culkin, who performed kazoo, percussion, and sang, he was in the band with friend Matt Colbourn (who played guitar and sang), Phoebe Kreutz (who played glockenspiel and sang), Deenah Vollmer (who played, yes, an actual pizza box and sang) and Austin Kilham (who played tambourine and sang).
The Live Shows
The idea of the group, as it’s perhaps not hard to believe, began as a joke. Kreutz even went so far as to say the Velvet Underground wrote their songs about pizza but had to change their lyrics to jibe with the “standards of their day.” Along with performing, the band handed out pizza in pizza boxes to attendees, who could eat the fare or even bang on the boxes along with Vollmer.
In 2014, the band was booed off stage in England while playing the Dot to Dot Festival, fans believing Culkin’s collective was mocking Reed. The Pizza Underground stopped playing after 15 minutes upon having beer thrown at them.
Playing the rudimentary (though at times profound) rock that the Velvet Underground was known for, the band really leaned into their assignment. Check out a live performance from the band below.
The Recordings
In 2013, the band recorded a live demo at Culkin’s apartment and, a month later, they performed at a Lou Reed tribute show in New York City. In December of that year, Culkin recorded a video of himself eating a cheese pizza, which was meant to parody Andy Warhol and his eating of a Burger King Whopper in the 66 Scenes from America documentary. In 2014, they released their first music video, which incorporated songs/parody covers like “All Pizza Parties” (“All Tomorrow’s Parties”), “Pizza Gal” (“Femme Fatale” and “Take a Bite of the Wild Slice” (“Walk on the Wild Side”).
The Pizza Underground recorded a live cassette at the medium-sized Seattle venue Chop Suey and it was released in 2016 on Bitter Melody Records. Two years later, much to the chagrin of Culkin fans, the actor-musician announced during an interview with Marc Maron on the WTF podcast that the band had dissolved.
Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images
