Deenah Vollmer, the group's "pizza box" percussionist, said the idea for the Pizza Underground began as a joke in 2012. "We soon realized you can replace most any word with slice or cheese," she told
The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Glockenspiel player Phoebe Kreutz stated they believed the Velvet Underground songs were written about pizza, but had to be reworded to accommodate the "standards of their day." In December, a viral video of Culkin eating a cheese pizza was uploaded to
YouTube. He was parodying
Andy Warhol consuming a
Burger King Whopper in
Jørgen Leth's documentary
66 Scenes from America. Culkin was promoting the debut of the Pizza Underground. The group released its first music video in January 2014, parodying various Velvet Underground songs such as "All Pizza Parties" ("
All Tomorrow's Parties"), "Pizza Gal" ("
Femme Fatale") and "Take a Bite of the Wild Slice" (
Lou Reed's "
Walk on the Wild Side"). The video featured the group performing on a bed of pizza boxes, surrounded by pizza checkered walls, with members of the group wearing slices of pizza as masks. Also in 2014, the cassette of the demo was released by Bitter Melody Records on yellow, white, and red
cassettes. An 18-show North American tour entitled
Fresh to Your Door took place that same year. The band quit playing within 15 minutes, and in response to having pints of beer thrown at the band,
frontman Macaulay Culkin complained to the crowd, "Why are you throwing those? ...I'd rather drink them!" The initial cassette release was followed by
Live at Chop Suey, also on Bitter Melody Records, recorded at the
Chop Suey in
Seattle, Washington. In January 2018, Culkin revealed during an interview on the
WTF with Marc Maron podcast that the Pizza Underground had broken up. ==References==