E-Mail This Article to a Friend Here’s Johnny The Blackjacks return, Lilli leaves, and a Rumble winner BY BRETT MILANO

If you lived in Boston during the mid ’80s, wore lots of black leather, maintained a certain tough attitude, and liked your rock punky and anthemic, odds are good that your favorite band were the Blackjacks. Led by singer/guitarist Johnny Angel (then widely known as one of Boston’s consummate cynics and wise-asses), the trio — and later quartet — were responsible for some of the era’s most memorable fist wavers, including "That’s Why I Always Dress in Black," "Dreaming of Saturday Again," and "Blackjacks’ Manifesto," which everyone knew by its original title of "Motherfucker." They also pulled off one of the decade’s more notorious record-release parties: to celebrate the arrival of 1985’s Dress in Black, they roasted a whole pig at the Fenway club Jumpin’ Jack Flash, only to serve up pink slabs of pork a few hours before they were ready.

Angel wound up making a decisive exit from the Northeast. After a Blackjacks show in 1989, he got into the packed-up car that he’d parked outside the Rat and hauled it out to LA. He’s set foot in Boston only once since then, having moved on to music journalism and, more recently, a surprising career in left-wing talk radio. During the interim, though he did play a show with a trio that included some Blackjacks tunes a couple of years back, few people dared ask him about the possibility of coming home for a reunion show.

But now it’s happening, with Angel heading back to Boston for a week’s worth of gigs. He’ll first play solo at Zuzu on Monday June 7, then reunite the original Blackjacks (bassist Mike "Whitey" White and drummer Jeff Erna) for shows at Doc Ryan’s in Salem on the 10th and the Abbey Lounge the 11th and 12th. He’ll be bringing a Blackjacks CD that contains both of their out-of-print mini-albums (the first was Homestead’s inaugural release; the second was on Throbbing Lobster) plus some unreleased tracks. There will, however, be absolutely no pork involved.

Why reunite now after 15 years? "For one thing, my wife wanted to get me out of the house for a week," he reveals over phone from LA. "For another, I’ve been hearing about this new club that everybody loves, this Abbey place. I’m imagining that it’s a lot like Cantones [the legendary Financial District hot spot]. Cantones was the first place I ever played — and since this will probably be my last-ever punk-rock show, the Abbey should be about right."

What made him leave Boston when he did? "Lots of reasons — I’d done everything I could possibly do to make a decent living in Boston, there was nothing left to try. And I hate winter."

Besides, the Blackjacks had at that point been local headliners for most of a decade and had even gotten some commercial airplay. "I would say we were a bridge between the earlier, rootsy bands of the ’80s and the hard-rock bands that came after us. I’ve since gotten to know Frank Black and I know he was a Blackjacks fan; so were Dicky Barrett and Evan Dando. Listening to the albums now, the songs I like are the ones I used to hate playing, like ‘Home Town’ and ‘Possession.’ Those are sadder-sounding, they say something more than ‘I wear black clothes because you’re a douchebag.’ Or ‘Motherfucker,’ which I wrote when I saw Reagan on TV lying his ass off about the contras."

That political segue is typical of Angel’s current gig. Rechristened as Johnny Wendell (because his employers didn’t like the obvious rock-and-roll pseudonym), he’s one of the few left-wing talkers employed by Clear Channel for its LA KFI-AM outlet. "They took me because I’m skilled at it and I’m entertaining. I think people have the idea that talk radio is a propaganda tool for the American right, but what it really is is a safe haven for them. I get a mix of people who would kill me if they got hold of me and people who thought Christ descended and was talking to them through me — exactly what we’re looking for."

Meanwhile, Angel is taking the rare opportunity to get nostalgic. "No way I’d ever be out there hauling my amp around again, but I loved having so few responsibilities, and there’s nothing like seeing people singing your songs back to you. Everybody misses their adolescence, and I protracted mine to age 33. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss some of it."