Joan Jett plays a free show tonight in Coney Island

By Alex Rush

The Beep loves rock ’n’ roll!

Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, known for the 1982 single and jukebox favorite “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll,” will kick off Borough President Markowitz’s free summer concert series tonight.

Jett and her longtime band will bring their guitar-driven, hard rock songs to a new venue this year, as Markowitz begrudgingly changed venues this summer after a lawsuit over noise violations.

The concerts are now in the W. 21 Street lot that used to host the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which can hold more than 2,000 people.

The new location may be about a mile away from the original concert series site, but the spirit of the gigs remains the same.

“While the shows are in a slightly different location, tens of thousands of Brooklynites will still get the same high quality, free concerts,” said Markowitz.

The annual gigs will celebrate the golden oldies every Thursday night through Aug.18. Other classic acts include 1960s pop phenomenon The Monkees, doo-wop group The Spinners and Cheap Trick, famous for the hit record “I Want You to Want Me.

Seaside Summer Concert Series [W. 21 Street between Surf Avenue and the Boardwalk in Coney Island, (718) 222-0600], July 14 through Aug. 18 at 7:30 pm. Free. For info, visit, www.brooklynconcerts.com/seaside.html.

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B-52s to bring a Love Shack to Coney Island

To paraphrase the B-52s, Coney Island — that’s where it’s at this summer.

So, perfectly enough, the fabulous foursome behind the iconic pop songs “Love Shack” and “Rock Lobster” will turn Asser Levy Seaside Park into a dance party on Aug. 19 — and no doubt people will be wearing next to nothing because it’s hot as an oven.

With their out-of-this-world, lo-fi sound, nonsensical lyrics, and quirky, B-movie style — after 30 years, the ladies still sport wild hair, if no longer in a bouffant — the B-52s are the least likely pop stars. But here they are, 25 years and 20 million albums later.

“We always appealed to people outside the mainstream,” said rehead Kate Pierson. “And I think more people feel they’re outside the mainstream these days.”

Since forming in the late 1970s as part of the burgeoning New Wave movement, the band embraced the performance aspect and embodied fun. The same is true today — the band’s most-recent album was even called “Funplex.”

The feeling’s pretty mutual. Once the guitar starts riffing familiarly on “Private Idaho” or “Rock Lobster,” you get pulled in. And if that doesn’t do it, the ladies’ pitch-perfect harmonies on their catchy choruses or Fred Schneider’s enthusiastic speak-sing will surely get you dancin’ and a lovin’ at the ultimate love shack — Asser Levy Park.

B-52s at Asser Levy Seaside Park [W. Fifth Street and Surf Avenue in Coney Island, (718) 222-0600], Aug. 19 at 7:30 pm. Free. For info visit brooklynconcerts.com.

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Aretha concerts canceled

The Queen of Soul is not Brooklyn-bound after all!

Aretha Franklin’s two free shows here next week — first on Aug. 9 at Wingate Field in Crown Heights, and then again on Aug. 12 at Asser Levy Seaside Park in Coney Island — have been canceled due to an unspecified injury that the singer claims to have suffered on Sunday (recent reports say she fell in the bathtub).

“We’re quite bummed,” said Laura Sinagra, a spokeswoman for Borough President Markowitz, who hosts both concert series. Sinagra added that Markowitz and his producer are hoping to re-schedule Franklin’s dates, but do not yet know if that will be possible this season.

Sinagra referred all questions to Debra Garcia, the organizer of Markowitz’s free summer concerts. Garcia did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Calls to Franklin’s agent about the injury were not returned as well.

For 20 years, the borough president has been enticing the 66-year-old Franklin — known universally as just Aretha — to play his free concert series. This would have been his biggest coup since succeeding Howie Golden, and Franklin’s first shows in Brooklyn.

“Certainly thousands of music lovers were eagerly awaiting these historic shows, her first ever in Brooklyn, in the heart of our African-American community in Crown Heights and in world-famous Coney Island,” said Markowitz. “Believe me, for the more than 30 years that I have been presenting free concerts here, Ms. Franklin has been at the top of my wish-list, and that dream was about to come true. We can only hope she will reschedule when she’s feeling better — and we Brooklynites will be thrilled to welcome the Queen of Soul to the County of Kings.”

On the Sunday in question, Franklin performed at the South Shore Music Circus in Cohasset, Mass., for 85 minutes, which included a 10-minute intermission when she “slipped to the side of the stage, took a seat in the shadows and toweled off while her massive orchestra took over,” according to the Boston Herald. Throughout the performance, the hefty soul legend also seemed out of breath, according to the paper.

The remainder of Markowitz’s concert series will continue as scheduled, with John Legend performing this Thursday at Asser Levy Seaside Park.

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They're b-b-b-b-b-bad!

This show is guaranteed to be b-b-b-b-b-bad.

George Thorogood and the Destroyers hit Asser Levy Seaside Park hard on July 29 — and if that isn’t enough bad to the bone rock and roll for you, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes will perform, too.

“I couldn’t be more excited. I’ve never played in Brooklyn before,” said Thorogood, best known as the man behind “The House Rent Boogie/One Bourbon, One Shot, One Beer,” the anthem of bar flies everywhere, and “Bad to the Bone,” one of the best uses of the stutter since “My Generation.”

Now 60, the rocker claims he isn’t the badass he once purported to be. In fact, he’s written dozens of other rock-a-billy tunes which have nothing to do with hard drinking, carousing and womanizing, but — big surprise — his audience never latched onto them.

“I’ve only had three songs about drinking and I only wrote two of them,” he said. “But that’s what we cut our teeth on, and that’s what people turned onto when they were on the radio.”

Some would say Thorogood’s hard riffs and far-from-refined lyrics touch a primal chord with his audience. Yet Thorogood considers his music comfort food.

“There are few people in the world who enjoy a filet mignon and a glass of wine every day,” he said. “But everyone can enjoy a cheeseburger and a beer.”

We’ll drink to that.

George Thorogood and the Destroyers, plus Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes at Asser Levy Seaside Park [W. Fifth Street and Surf Avenue in Coney Island, (718) 222-0600], July 29 at 7:30 pm. Free. For info, visit www.brooklynconcerts.com.

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Fun, fun, fun this Thursday

Nothing says summer quite like the music of The Beach Boys.

With intricately harmonized songs about cars, girls and surfing, the group perfectly captured the stuff of youth and carefree days, but with a musicianship and innovation that made it, without exaggeration, one of the best bands ever.

Today, nearly 50 years after first breaking onto the radio with hits like “Surfin’ Safari” and “409,” long after the tans have faded and the charts were a barometer of a band’s success, the Beach Boys are still at it.

With 150 shows a year that bring them from the West Coast to the East and across the world, the band brings the California sun to Coney Island’s Asser Levy Seaside Park on Thursday.

Of course, these aren’t really the Beach Boys, but a simulation; the only original “Boy” gracing the stage is frontman Mike Love, the craftsman behind “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “I Get Around,” “Help Me, Rhonda,” “California Girls,” and “Good Vibrations.” He’s joined by Beach Boy-vet Bruce Johnson and a slew of vocalists and guitarists to help bring that pitch-perfect Beach Boys sound live.

In more of a blast from the past, the evening will also feature Mickey Dolenz (of Monkees’ fame), The Turtles, and Mark Lindsay, former lead singer of Paul Revere and the Raiders. It’s guaranteed to be a night of fun, fun, fun.

The Beach Boys at Asser Levy Seaside Park [W. Fifth Street and Surf Avenue in Coney Island, (718) 222-0600], July 22, 7:30 pm. Free. For info, visit www.brooklynconcerts.com.

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Kenny Vance & the Planotones back in the nabe

By Meredith Deliso

Today, Long Island University students fill the Brooklyn Paramount Theatre with the sounds of squeaking sneakers and buzzers in its current incarnation as a gymnasium. But during the 1950s, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis made the heralded movie theater reverberate with the sounds of rock and roll on several legendary occasions.

Kenny Vance remembers those days as if they were yesterday. As a teenager, the Brooklyn native attended legendary shows in the theater hosted by Alan Freed, the disc jockey who coined the term “rock and roll,” and would be in awe of the talent before him.

“As a kid I remember going there, waiting in line to see people who are in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, people who are the inventors of rock and roll,” says Vance. “The thought of seeing all these people live was mind-blowing.”

Now, more than 50 years later, Vance is a hall of famer himself. Dubbed the “Dylan of Doo-Wop,” Vance is one of the founding members of Jay & the Americans, and was inducted in 2007 into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame, joining the ranks of Barbara Streisand, Simon & Garfunkel and Louis Armstrong. He was also inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2002.

Vance currently preserves the genre performing all across the country with his band, The Planotones, classicists on the doo-wop formed in 2002 and also consisting of Johnny Gale, Kurt “Frenchy” Yahjian, Jimmy Bense, keyboardist Chip Degaard, and Tony Gallino on drums.

You can hear them on September 1 when they play the Summer Concert Series at Seaside Park in Brooklyn as part of a free summer-long concert series.“I like playing there because it’s my hometown,” says Vance, who grew up in Flatbush, going to high school at Erasmus and Brooklyn Academy of Music, and has lived all over Brooklyn since. “The audience is also people from Brooklyn, so that’s a reconnection with the people from the neighborhood.”

While it’s been many years since the days of sock hops and poodle skirts, the demand for the youthful energy and strong harmonies of doo-wop is still strong. Vance himself is booked through 2011 with gigs around the country, and he also has a new CD out with his band, “Oceans of Time,” on LaPlan Records, that has him gaining fans all over the world.

“We keep this type of music alive, and it seems to me that this is the music of America,” says Vance. “I think that our audience trusts the fact that we’re going to portray the music in a way that we respect it.”

That’s only natural, since Vance has been entrenched in the genre ever since he was a teen, leaving college at the age of 19 to pursue a music career full time with Jay and the Americans and reaching the heights of Billboard with songs like “She Cried,” “Come a Little Bit Closer,” and “This Magic Moment,” as well as touring with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones during each of their first U.S. performances.

For Vance, those times aren’t just a distant memory.

“When we perform, the audience is kind of transported back into time,” says Vance. “They treat us like we’re teen idols, so the audience gives us an extra jolt of energy.”

Vance is happy to see a wide age range in the audience as well, reaching beyond the fanbase of those who were teenagers in the 1950s and 1960s, going to shows at the Brooklyn Paramount, to those who are today.

“I’m still as enthusiast about it as I was when I first started, even more so, because we’re bringing something to the people that they seem to thirst for, whether they’re old or young,” says Vance. “It’s really very gratifying to be able to do that.”

Kenny Vance and the Planotones play the Summer Concert Series at Seaside Park (Ocean Parkway and Seabreeze Avenue) September 1. (This was the show originally scheduled for July 21 but was rained out). The show is free and starts at 7:15 p.m. Feel free to bring lawn chairs. For more information, call 718-222-0600.

The band also plays Parsippany Hilton (One Hilton Ct., 908-876-9100) in Parsippany, NJ, on September 4 at 8 p.m.; Great Auditorium (15 Pilgrim Pathway) in Ocean Grove, NJ, on September 5, show time TBA; and at the Doo Wop Extravaganza at the Capital One Bank Theatre (960 Brush Hollow Road, 516-334-0800) in Westbury, NY on September 12 at 8 p.m.

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Seaside controversy

Opponents of a new $64 million amphitheater at Asser Levy Seaside Park are vowing to block Borough President Marty Markowitz’s plans.

This week in our papers that's heating up the comments section:

Borough President Marty Markowitz has secured a top lineup for this summer's Seaside Summer Concert Series, with Blondie, Donna Summer and Pat Benetar among those scheduled to perform.

Markowitz says its a "miracle" the celebrities even said yes, though, what with Asser Levy's limited facilities.

Hence his controversial effort to construct a new $64 million amphitheater, complete with such necessities as bathrooms (that may also put a ticket price on the currently free concerts), though critics worry the new venue will ruin their community.

Live in the neighborhood? Fan of the concert series? What do you think about the on-going issue?

Read more about it here.

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Seaside rocks with girl power

Donna Summer's coming to Brooklyn

By Joe Maniscalco

Rock or disco?

That might’ve been the most important question a teenager back in Blondie’s heyday of the late 1970s and 1980s had to answer, but fortunately for attendees of this year’s Seaside Summer Concert Series at Asser Levy Park (West 5 Street and Surf Avenue), they won’t have to confront that most monumental of decisions.

The 31st edition of the popular concert series will not only feature rock icon Deborah Harry but disco queen Donna Summer as well.The full concert line-up won’t be announced until June 15, but a tentative look at this year’s shows reveals no lack of female star power.

In addition to the aforementioned superstars, this year’s Seaside Summer Concert Series will also feature “heartbreaker” Pat Benatar who’ll appear on the same bill as Blondie to celebrate her own claim to 1980s sonic royalty.

The hard-rocking Donnas might still be in their nascent stages, but they’ll also be on stage representing the next generation of fierce female rockers.

According to Borough President Marty Markowitz - the host of the concert series - efforts are also underway to sign yet another “mystery female star” to be named shortly.

This year’s Seaside Summer Concert Series won’t be an entirely all-girl affair, however.

Famed singing duo Hall & Oates are also scheduled to appear along with Creedence Clearwater Revisited and Mountain.

The 2009 edition of the Seaside Concert Series won’t end without the return of its popular Latin Night as well.

All shows are free and begin at 7:30 p.m. A limited number of $5 rental chairs will be available, but concert-goers are encouraged to bring their own chairs and blankets.

The partial list of concert dates are as follows: Creedence Clearwater Revisited/Mountain - July 16; Hall & Oats - August 6; Blondie/Pat Benatar/The Donnas - August 13; Donna Summer - August 27.

Call 718-222-0600 for concert updates.

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