Tara Mackay on vocals and bass, Christian Elton on guitars, vocals and keyboards and AJ Naito on drums was the original lineup of the New Jersey band The Parcels.
This lineup would release a self-titled 7″ in 1998 on the label Brentwood Estates (BES-005). The songs on this record were “Oh, What a Busy Day” and “Green Means Go” on the A side and “I Dream of Jean Genet” on the B side. The three songs had been recorded in mid September of that year at Pain and Pleasure Studios, Small Factory’s Dave Auenbach’s studios in Providence, Rhode Island, and were mastered at Greg Lee Processing.
Melissa Wysocki would take over bass and vocals replacing Tara in 1999. This new lineup would record the wonderful album “Have a Go with The Parcels” which was also released by Brentwood Estates (BES-013) in 2000.
The songs for the album were recorded with Bill Wells and Gary Olson at Marlborough Farms Studio in Brooklyn, NY.
This album had 12 songs, “Snappy New Haircut”, “Jessica Pancakes”, “I Could Be a Dinosaur”, “Horton Hears The Who”, “Patchoulie Julie”, “She’s a Good Witch”, “Minor Disturbance Grrrl”, “Green Means Go”, “I Stole a Star’, “Measure Me Sky”, “Lobster Kids” and “Monkey Bars”.
The songs were mastered at Nonstop Studio and the design and layout is credited to Ryan Lewis from Kincaid, Grape Soda and The Weight.
The band would appear on a few compilations too. The song “Snappy New Haircut” would find its way on “New Atmosphere for the Future: U.S. Pop Life Vol.3-International” CD released by the Japanese label Contact Records (CR-10) in 2000. Then “She’s a Good Witch” was on “Will there be Time for Tea?” released by Morgan Leah Records (MORGAN 348) in 2001. That same year the band would have “If I Ever Get the Chance Again” on Shelflife Records’ “One” CD (LIFE 040).
Lastly in 2002 the band had the wonderful “Jessica Pancakes” on my friend Tommy’s compilation “Hit Music Only” released by thee Swedish label Heavenly Pop Hits (POPH01).
The band played only a few gigs from what I’ve read. But gigs included ones with Wolfie, Barcelona, Masters of the Hemisphere and Calvin Johnson. Also they toured the East Coast during the summer of 2000 and played the Kindercore Records’ Expo 2000 FFesrtival. The band would call it a day in 2002.
About being in other bands I didn’t find much information. I saw that Christian Elton played bass on a Panda Riot song called “Marker” in the 2007 album “She Dares all Things. AJ Naito was in the band Pecan Sandies. I also read about a band called Home Economics, Scary Monster and another called The Dares were members could have been involved with.
What is good to know too is that the band’s website still exists. The first thing you’ll see is the band’s appearance on the I-Pop segment of the Japanese TV show Hakai that aired in February 1999.
Then there’s a few little pieces of info I picked here and there… for example the band playing at Yat’s in 2000, or on April of 2001 they played with The Ladybug Transistor at Smith College, or that the band was based in Sewell, New Jersey.
Anyone remembers them? I loved this band back in the day and I just remembered them today, and thought… how come I’ve never written about them or even recommended them on my blog!
EDIT: some interesting bit that have been shared on Facebook: It seems that the band was supposed to contribute a brand new song for the “Hit Music Only” CD comp. What happened was that the producer had disappeared with all the master recordings to in the end the band contributed a song off the album.
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