Macaulay Culkin and his pizza-themed Velvet Underground tribute band, The Pizza Underground, were pelted with pints of beer and booed off a stage in Nottingham, England, on Sunday night.
They took the Rock City stage at the Dot to Dot festival to chants of, “pizza, pizza, pizza”. Culkin opened the show with a joke Brits wouldn’t understand, saying, “Hello Cleveland.” (Brits love when Americans make America-centric jokes at UK venues.) He then asked, “How are you kids doing? Do you like pizza? Do you like songs about pizza? Good, ’cause that’s literally all we do.” Then they handed out 14″ pizzas to the front row and played their first song.
The Nottingham Post reports members of the crowd started booing by the end of the first song, quoting one anonymous fan saying, “It just sounds awful. I can’t believe he is doing this. Why bother? It must go down well in America or something.”
The crowd’s displeasure escalated to pints of beer being thrown at the stage. “Why are you throwing those? I’d rather drink them,” Culkin said, but the crowd didn’t stop there.
Fifteen minutes into the show, a beer connected with Culkin and soaked his shirt just as he was preparing for a kazoo solo. “That’s the end of the show. Goodnight,” he reportedly said, ending the show on that memorable note. Who knew Nottingham rock clubs needed chicken wire shields on their stages?
According to Dot to Dot festival organizers, The Pizza Underground’s other shows at Manchester and Bristol were “barnstorming” (meaning successful). And wouldn’t you know it, we have a video of the Bristol set. You can decide for yourself how positively barnstormed you feel.
It’s worth noting Culkin talks about the internet-famous Ryan Gosling / Macaulay Culkin T-shirt near the ten minute mark: “If somebody wears a T-shirt of you when you’re nine years old, I’m not sure how to feel about that. No, I mean, not in a bad way. No, I’m just saying it’s a confusing feeling. I wear shirts of myself all the time. They should have Ryan Gosling on them, too.”
