In the spirit of the temporarily merged Arts and Food sections of this newspaper, a rare analysis of pizza-eatin' music is certainly in order.
This need comes largely as a result of the recent opening of Ian's Pizza By the Slice, 319 N. Frances St., which over the past month and a half has challenged the pizza-eatin' conventions of many members of the UW-Madison community.
Who ever thought of putting steak or macaroni and cheese on a pizza? As recently as the previous Bush administration, an American may have been tried for treason for merely sharing the thought of a buffalo wing pizza.
But now, alas, it is the 21st century, and courageous citizens like Ian, consistently working magic within his blood-orange Frances Street walls, have the ability to turn the institution of pizza eatin' around.
With that, a crack investigative team (all right'the author) has determined just what the proper music is to go along with this new breed of sophisticated pizza eatin.'
The new world of pizza eatin' can easily be broken down into a few genres: the traditional (read: cheese, sausage, pepperoni'the stuff on which Tombstone made millions); the sophisticated (i.e. anything with pesto, artichokes, fresh mozzarella, basil leaves, etc.) and the primal breed of pizzas (very carnivorous'anything with meat, and lots of it).
Simply put, the traditional pizzas are the pop stars of pizza. Hence, these varieties tend to go well with any type of top 40 pop music.
Think of it this way: Cheese pizza is an institution that often goes unordered; it simply occurs. It is the vanilla ice cream of pizzas (ice cream eatin' is an entirely different topic not to be addressed in this space).
The litany of three-minute teen-age hits that line the Z104 airwaves are similar. The warbling tones of Britney Spears, 'NSync and the rest of them are just there as a form of rather nonoffensive (to most, anyway) white noise'like cheese pizza. Ta-da. the traditional pizza-eatin' music conundrum is solved.
Moving on along to the sophisticated breed of pizzas, the pizza-eatin' music question becomes harder to answer.
These fresh, exciting new-age pizza offerings'self-righteous Madisonians might call them \progressive pizzas""'lend themselves to more fanciful forms of music.
Like classical or good, traditional jazz music , pizzas topped with pesto, artichokes or exotic seasonings are something with which most people are somewhat acquainted, but of which hardly anyone gets enough.
In this respect, a meal of fresh mozzarella and basil pizza is tantamount to a Mozart symphony. A crisp slice of artichoke-pesto pizza satisfies like a Miles Davis tune.
This leaves the last classification of pizza-eatin''the meat, meat and more meat group.
This one proved the easiest in determining the appropriate pizza-eatin' music.
Four letters: AC/DC.
What says coarse sausage, thick pepperoni and soggy bacon, dripping with grease quite like ""Back in Black?""
When consumed in the back seat of an old Camaro (with T-tops, please) this type of pizza goes equally well with the tunes of Journey, Foreigner, Supertramp or Rush (the band, not the Limbaugh).
The best thing to remember when confronting the pizza-eatin' music dilemma in these complicated times is to simply take these things slice by slice, topping by topping.
