Sat. July 21

 Johnny Angel used to sing, play guitar and write songs for Thrills, later called City Thrills, and then Blackjacks. The Bostonian moved to L.A. some years ago, where he's established himself as a left-wing talk show host (imagine!) on KTLK-AM. Angel is back in town Saturday July 21 for two eulogies: One for his father, who died in April, and another for Barb Kitson, the singer for the punk-pop Thrills and City Thrills, which hail from the first punk rock era. Those bands wrapped anger and frustration into three-chord celebration, and rarely fell short of a hook-packed melody. Kitson was an exuberant, gloriously unpolished singer.  And last October she died at 51. So, Angel will speak at his dad's memorial service during the day and revert to rocker form at night where he and Robin Lane will play a free set at the Abbey Lounge in honor of his ex-bandmate. They'll play songs from all bands, including Lane's Chartbusters - a new wave band of the same era. It should be nostalgic, sad, and fun. Starts at 7 p.m. Want more? We rang up Angel and asked him to email us his thoughts on Barb and those days. Please continue ...

3 Beacon St., Somerville  www.abbeylounge.com

The most beautiful thing about the first wave of punk rock is that it gave people like Barbara Kitson and Johnny Angel (not to mention our would have been third drummer GG Allin) a place in a world that shunned and rejected the aggressively anti-social twerps that we were. After the rancid bleatings of the 60's counterculture were laid to rest underneath the crushing weight of the Eagles' California soft rock and its urban but not urbane cousin, disco, there was no place for would be latter street fighting peeps. Praise Allah for the Ramones and Television and the Dictators 210 miles southwest of us and DMZ/Real Kids n' WA in our backyards--finally something relatable.
 
So we ate it up like lumpy farina, those groups plus the Pistols and our true loves, the pre-Pepper 60's pop and girl groups. And so barfed it back out in a speedy blur, Barb, myself, Merle Allin (the brother that stayed to play) on bass and the mighty Mike Collins drumming--always aiming for that breakaway train going down the mountain side sound, trying to hit the ultimate note hard during a second set Saturday at the Rat or Cantone's, a wash of distortion with a taste of melody and no dynamics except up and up and up.
 
Our career's trajectory wasn't quite that soaring. C'est la vie.
 
We Thrills played one reunion two years after we split up, in 1984. And talked about doing another 17 years later until Osama destroyed the WTC and the spirits of any American that had to fly to get anywhere, which included half of Thrills. And that's where it ended as Barb's health deteriorated from a lethal and pernicious combination of legal remedies to her demons taken in excess.
 
It was sad seeing her the way she became, not the sharp, brilliant and wickedly witty partner I had in 1979, but kind of a mordant hermit with parallel problems from isolation and drugs. All the same, we did become friends again, with her showing a lot of interest in my children and me in her health and occasional attempts at sobriety.
 
I remember our last conversation, a few months before she died. She had the reissued Thrills disc that I'd sent her and she loved it, but her voice broke as she told me that 'I can never hit these notes again, John'.
 
When she died, I felt that she had finally found a little peacefulness, as a literal motherless child twice (she was adopted and her beloved, non-biological mom preceded her a few years in death), she was damaged beyond repair. And she had no idea how loved she was from those that knew her in the club scene-- I heard Lizzie Borden deliver the most passionate eulogy imaginable on Carmelita's Sunday night radio program over the Net here in LA. So, all I can do is say goodbye in a very small way, with our old friend Robin Lane singing a few of our songs (how that would have gone over with the late B Kitson, who knows--Barb used to refer to Robbie as "your fucking hippie girlfriend" to me, I suspect that deep down she was quite taken with RL and the 'Busters, who wasn't?).
 
Maybe we'll see you at the Abbey, I hope you can get a sitter, a parole or break out of your managed care unit, whatever it takes. Let's raise the holy spirit of cheery sociopathy one more time, in the name of the one-time "Queen of Cool"--OK?