Push Comes to Shove

The best way to describe this band is a mixture of ideas from electronic and experimental music fused with progressive metal. An all instrumental band, Kong are able to create various sounds and moods, not unlike some post rock. Kong often has segments where the band is playing entirely separate from one another, yet the sound works. Eclectic is a word that comes to mind when listening to this band.
They started out in 1988 as a side project for Amsterdam-based musicians Dirk DeVries (guitar, samples, programming), Aldo Sprenger (guitar), Mark Drillich (bass, programming), and Rob Smits (drums)…

Mike Slamer remains one of the unsung and criminally underestimated guitar heroes of rock. Much like fellow peers Michael Lee Firkins and Reb Beach, he is one of those guys with amazing chops, touching all sorts of work over the course of a career and never quite realizing the credit they deserve. He has been the guy behind some of the most amazing melodic hard rock releases of the past 20 years. The list includes, but is not limited to, Steelhouse Lane, Seventh Key, Slamer, and Terry Brock, and we can’t forget his work in the 80’s with Streets (featuring Kansas singer Steve Walsh) and the 70’s with City Boy…

Beyond Description (1973-1989) is a companion set to 2001's 12-disc box The Golden Road (1965-1973), which collected all of the Grateful Dead's albums for Warner Bros, adding bonus tracks to each album, along with a double-disc collection of early pre-Warner recordings called "Birth of the Dead" for good measure. Beyond Description picks up the story after the Dead started their own label with 1973's Wake of the Flood and runs all the way to 1989, when they released their last studio album, Built to Last. Like The Golden Road, each album here is enhanced with bonus tracks, running the gamut from as little as three (on Built to Last) to has many as 16 (a full-length bonus disc added to 1980's live acoustic Reckoning), but there's nothing quite as enticing as "Birth of the Dead." Indeed, "enticing" is not a word that's frequently associated with the albums in this collection.

By 1987, the Grateful Dead had lived many of their nine lives but were about to embark on one not a soul had seen coming. In The Dark, their first studio album in seven years, had spawned a hit (A TOP 10 SINGLE FOR THE GRATEFUL DEAD?!) and "Touch Of Grey" begat a new generation with their fanny packs and their MTV and their undeniable quest to join the party already in progress. And boy, did the Dead let them in! But not without fine-tuning their sonic vibes to meet the new demand.

During the hair-today-gone-tomorrow eighties party, Hollywood heavy-on-image rock groups were a dime-a-dozen. Every label scrambled to sign what they thought would take-off like the next Guns N' Roses…