Fri. July 6 & Sat. July 7

"This is what happens when punk rockers get older, have babies and get a little consciousness - sometimes." That's the way Johnny Angel Wendell flags his new album, "IT!!." Wendell has acted and is a talk radio host (batting left for KTLK-AM), but in Boston - the town he prowled during the late '70s through 1982 as the guitarist-singer-leader of Thrills (later City Thrills) - we knew him as a snotty, smart, melodic punk-pop guy. Contentious? Oh, yeah. (There was no Wendell then; just Angel. He was also, rather prodigiously, an enthusiastic imbiber of various drugs and alcoholic drinks, something he swore off for good 26-plus years ago.)  City Thrills relocated to New York in 1982, but things did not gel in the Big Apple. Angel came back to Boston in 1987 to form the Blackjacks - more guitar-oriented hard rock-punk and left two years later for LA. He's been out in LA since, and recorded a new album, "IT!!" that was released earlier this year. The new album has a mix of country, rock, Americana, ballads and rockers. Yep, shades of maturity. Almost Zevon-like in "She's Someone Else's Someone Now." "Vanamos a Panama," with Mighty Mighty Bosstones, has a Pogues/Mexican brashness to it. He calls himself a "country-folkie-rocker."
    Angel returns home every so often to gig and is doing so Friday July 6 and Saturday July 7 for shows at Radio. On Friday, he's joined by Robin Lane, Mary Lou Lord, Watts and (tentatively) a guest set from "All Kindsa Guests" - meaning a group playing six Real Kids songs with Real Kids leader John Felice. On Saturday he's joined by the 360's (who will also play a mini-Thrills tribute set), Darling Pet Munkee (another of Michael J. Epstein's many projects), and Eric Martin and the Illyrians.
JSInk spoke to Angel recently about what he's been up to what he's going to do here.

JSInk: You are, like the film "Punk Rock Dad," shows us, a punk rock dad. Sort of. Although you wouldn't really be termed a punk rocker at this point, at 56.

Angel: Punk rockers that have kids, they tour six months out of the years. They have to. Playing punk rock your whole life is fine. It pays your rent, your kids' college, your health insurance. but I don't have any obligation to play anything other than what I want because I don't have any hits, so I can do what I like. In California, I'm better known for other things, people who hear me on the radio or read me on AOL and ask what I'm like, they're not expecting me to blow their eardrums out. So, when I play I'm not obligated to be anything. The sets I'm doing in Boston will be very varied - there are punk rock songs, a couple of them. If motivated, I can bang out songs I'm well-known for. I don't really want to, but you're obligated to play what people want to see. 

How's your attitude these days?
Better in some ways, worse in others. I'm much less prone to aggravate and attack people that are my natural allies, which I suppose was my undoing when I was younger, but I have no reservations about going for the jugular of people who I feel are my adversaries. That is perspective. All the aggro [of young punks today], lashing out in all directions or demanding a lot of attention, sounding like a baby. Thrills most famous song,  "Hey (Not Another Face in the Crowd)" is a very kid-like sentiment. It's a good one. My wife's talked about putting it on my tombstone. - I'm just a bunch of ashes in a can/I used to not be another face in the crowd; now I'm a roasted dead body under the earth.

You've got 12 tunes on "IT!!," running the stylistic gamut. Done over time or most together?
We recorded  basic tracks day. All the songs except "Safe Cracker' were written from 2009 to early 2011. You keep feeling certain things you don't have an outlet for and you don't have any reason to filter out what you think and feel. You just barf 'em out. I think with a lot of older musicians, they never take time off and keep making records and they find they're out of material and resort to making tribute records, cover records, re-recording their old songs, because they're not inspired by everything. Generally, most people have a certain amount of melodies in them and then [if successful] they stop living in the real world, so they can't relate to anything anymore. All you are is a machine that lives to generate cash, when you used to do it for other reasons. As far as what my songs mean, they're all little snapshots about stuff - a girl I see in the supermarket, a woman I see in the gym. The songs are about a feeling or about a certain kind of people; they're very direct songs. I want to make this poetic statement. But at 56, your dreams can't die. If they do, your mind dies and your imagination dies, and you're boring to everybody else. If I have anything of importance to say, it's just because you age this doesn't mean you stop doing what you love. 

When we last talked, you were a gym rat, pumped up.
I'm a boot camp fanatic now, not the gym. I do lots of repetition fast, some pushups, some weight resistance, jumping jacks, burpees. I go three times a week. I'm an exercise type person; it's the only body I have. I did sprain my wrist, though.

Affect your playing?
If I fingerpick, I don't move my wrist too much. The guitar's more of a prop; all the stuff [played in concert] is on disc. People say, "Who's playing bass?" It's Johnny Angel. I taped all the parts, the tracks. Why? Well, if I'm just standing up there by myself it seems a little boring. Every song will sound the same if you do it solo on guitar. Two, it's really costly to have a band. I don't care what other musicians say. I'm an adequate guitar player and bass player, and it's me singing over them.

How do you look at the music scene today, from the point of view that you're past the star-making demo?
The landscape is better now, which is weird. The gatekeepers are dead. The knock on me in mid-'90s, when I got demo deals, was this guy's in his late 30s, kid's won't buy it. But downloading wiped out the record business and tastes have changed. There's a generation and a half of people for who rock music has little appeal. As an older musician, self-contained, you can do all kinds of things. My stuff can go as far as I wanna push it. People are more egalitarian about what they listen to - good beat, melody, they like the words. There's no such thing as cutting edge anymore. The internet archives everything. When I started playing rock 'n' roll was a forward linear thing - the MC5, New York Dolls, Ramones, Boston groups like me. Now there's no forward motion, everything is this enormous melange, this mishmosh and everything's available online 100 percent of the time, which is why DJ music is so popular. There's this stew of music that didn't exist. I am set in my ways. I hear things in song form, but if I was a kid the DJ thing would be where I went. I'm a victim of my age.

Angel, married with two kids, is a frequent Facebook poster on all kinds of subjects from music to politics to sobriety. Recently, about his 10-year-old, he wrote, "You know what? He knows I did 'em all [drugs] to excess because I told him I did--I also told him that they seemed like a great and life enhancing path at one time but I realized their inherent lack of worth. And that however you think they make you feel, they make you feel nothing and make you useless. Maybe the "just say no" types should have nothing but people in recovery talking. "I did 'em--I thought they were the savior--as is, they were a waste of time, money and energy."

Set time: 9 pm. Tickets: TBA.

Stream: "Crazy Eyes" http://soundcloud.com/bestnewbandsdotcom2/johnnyangelcrazy-eyes

Stream: new one, "My Lesbian Friend" http://soundcloud.com/jangellamf/my-les#play

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