Weekend Special Edition

I wasn't going to burden myself with trying to post on weekends. But there's so much good music out there that I'm tossing up a Saturday special. The band today are the Enablers. I had a hard time with that sentence because it's important to note that they are not a "the" band. They are Enablers. Not to be confused with the Socal punk rock band The Enablers. These guys are way bay area. The members have played with any number of kick ass San Francisco bands from Shotwell to Timco. I should note here that if you can track down a copy of Timco's Gentleman Jim you should buy it, it's great. The lead vocalist for Enablers is Pete Simonelli who, in addition to being a pretty great guy, is a fine writer. Enablers do a very interesting spoken word/music thing. It's something that I've never really heard work very well. The whole concept makes me think of beret wearing beatnicks snapping their fingers in time to a bongo drum. However, Enablers may well be the first band to actuallly make this concept work. The music is kick ass and Pete's voice is deep and affecting, while his stories are absolutely spell binding. The problem with the whole music and spoken word deal is that there never seems to be a balance between the two. They're always competing with each other in a duel that can only end with audience losing. Enablers manage to find an excellent balance between music and word. In the hands of Enablers, the music and the vocal presentation (I'm trying to studiously avoid the word singing) push each other forward, yielding to each other as necessary before returning together to become a single wall of blistering media. It's good stuff. I highly recommend that this CD is bought at the label website. Check it out:

Pauly's Days in Cinema