Tewksbury Band's Parody Songs becomes YouTube Hits

For decades, "Weird" Al Yankcovic lived at the top of the charts, skewering the biggest names in pop music with his clever and irreverent parody songs.

Following in that proud tradition are a group of local young artists that call themselves FivePackLive."

JJ Heider, Mike Daley, Amanda Kozik and Joe Vitale have teamed to create parody videos of some well known tunes . The group has posted the videos on TouTube and has developed  a healthy following.

"We started the group in July of 2010 when we released our first video to "Billionaire" by Bruno Mars. It was called "Views Like No One Else," said Jeider. "At first we didn't know how many videos we were going to do. But recently YouTube has contacted us about possibly partnering up with them and making videos regularly for them.

"We haven't been approved for this yet because we only have four videos, but once we get more out they will contact us further. It's pretty exciting."

Heider and Daly, both students at Merrimack College, write the lyics to the parodies and sing most of the lyrics. Kozik, another Merrimack students, sings most of the choruses and appears in the videos as well. But the "Face" of the group is Vitale, who is clearly not shy in front of the camera.

"Joe Vitale is the star of most of the videos we do," said Heider. "He is usually the one dressing up as a "chick" in the videos."

Vitale is featured most recently in "Boston Creme" a hysterical parody of the Nelly tune "Just a Dream." In this video (see attached video), Vitale bemoans going into Tewksbury's famous Donna's Donuts and finding out that the only donuts on the rack are Boston Creme, a pastry he despises.

All of the songs FivePackLive has parodied can be found on their YouTube channel (youtube.com/user/fivepacklive).