Hit Pick

Despite what VH1 would have you believe, there's not much to love about the '80s. Take the clothes, for example: leg warmers, parachute pants, Members Only jackets, bolo ties, jazz boots and stretch pants -- talk about a fashion disaster. And the music, well, it was just as ill-conceived. The vapid, clinical, synth-inflected pop sounds of new wave ushered in the Revlon revolution known as glam metal -- not exactly what you'd call coming in like a lion and leaving like a lamb. But don't tell the members of Kelli*Said that the '80s sucked. Kelli Wolf and company (scheduled to appear this Friday, November 28, at the Soiled Dove, with Release, EndaNgereD and Devouring Saturn) are all about the big eight-zero. Let's just say that if Deborah Harry and Geoff Tate had had a sordid tryst that they've somehow managed to keep under wraps for the past twenty-odd years, Wolf would be their love child. On the outfit's sophomore effort, This Is a Demonstration, paper-thin guitar tones flirt with submerged crystalline synth lines until they both are sublimated under the weight of the mechanized-drum-machine-like beats. Kelli*Said's music may sound like it hasn't seen daylight since 1985, but in this case, that's not a bad thing, because it also sounds like the group has been writing and rehearsing this material for the past twenty years. Call it revisionism -- hell, call it whatever you want -- but here's one thing from the '80s that won't make you grit your teeth.