Skip to content
News

Macaulay Culkin’s Pizza Underground Get Served by Personal & the Pizzas

Velvet Underground, Macaulay Culkin, Personal & the Pizzas, Pizza Underground, Lou Reed

“Surprisingly very few articles re: the influence of pizza on the last 5 years of musicmaking.”

That’s a tweet from Gordon Voidwell on December 11, and the New York soul-funk-pop shape-shifter is typing from experience: His name may be in your iTunes library thanks to his work with “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” rappers Das Racist, of SPIN cover fame. But at least in the past few days of these between-holidays, listfocused music doldrums (thank you based Burial), pizza really has loomed, um, large. Especially today.

Okay, so earlier this week Foo Fighters played a warm-up gig at an actual pizza restaurant, never mind that pizza leftovers can also be good cold. But the big pizza-wave story is the existence of Macaulay Culkin’s pizza-themed Lou Reed cover band, the Pizza Underground, with song titles such as “Pizza Day” and “I’m Waiting for Delivery Man.”

When we heard of the project, our thoughts immediately turned to San Francisco pizza-punk heroes Personal & the Pizzas, whose 2010 Raw Pie cassette (on beloved Burger Records, but let’s stick to one food theme for now) came complete with a pepperoni-themed reworking of Iggy Pop’s 1973 Raw Power cover art. “The takeaway here,” we wrote, was that Personal et al.’s “biggest mistake was not taking their ‘za novelty far enough.”

Well, Personal & the Pizzas, whose songs include “Pepperoni Eyes” and “I Can Read,” have now responded to the Pizza Underground — and responded with anchovy-topped vigor. Contacted by eMusic, Personal communicated the following:

Yeah……………..Here’s my fuggin’ review;

First we’re gonna kill em

THEN! we’re gonna sue em

DONT MESS WITH THE FUCKIN’ PIZZAS, PRICK.

I CAN REED MOTHERFUCKER
I CAN REED.

You got all that, right? Kill first, file lawsuits later. Well, the year is almost over, but its biggest rock’n’roll beef (see, we knew Burger Records would fit in here again somehow) has only just begun. If Culkin & co. don’t respond in 30 minutes or less, then their Bandcamp demo stream is free.

Enjoy a personal favorite slice of Personal, Raw Pie‘s “I Don’t Wanna Be No Personal Pizza,” below.

//www.youtube.com/embed/pxcLB78KiSY?feature=player_detailpage

SPIN’s coverage of Lou Reed and his legacy:

Goodbye, Lou Reed: New Yorkers Lovingly Celebrate His Life and Music
Lou Reed, R.I.P.: Hear His Legacy in 15 Tracks
Lou Reed: A Critical Discography
The SPIN Interview: Lou Reed
Lou Reed’s New York City: The Velvets’ Stomping Grounds, Today
Five Great Rap Songs That Sample Lou Reed or the Velvet Underground
Toesucker Blues: Robert Christgau’s Farewell Salute to Lou Reed
Dave Hickey on Lou Reed: ‘We Have Lost the Master of the Mundane and the Malicious’
The Little Giant: John Cameron Mitchell Remembers His Neighbor, Lou Reed
The Top 100 Alternative Albums of the 1960s