Tuesday Night in Brownsville: SummerStage and WBLS and MCU present Dana Dane, Grand Puba and Jon B at Betsy Head Park in the Rain

Wednesday Evening in Bed-Stuy: SummerStage presents Nice and Smooth with The Awesome 2 at Von King Park

We had a great time in Von King Park in Bed-Stuy this evening at the SummerStage show featuring the classic sometimes slow, sometimes quick, always fly rhymes of Nice and Smooth -- Greg Nice and Smooth B -- who were in terrific form and brought a very large and enthusiastic crowd to the their feet.

Earlier, The Awesome 2 -- the legendary DJ duo of Teddy Tedd and Special K -- also the audience jumping as a party atmosphere enveloped the whole scene all evening.

The whole show was livestreamed over the great East Village Radio.














kidstuy692 uploaded this on YouTube:

And here's the classic "Sometimes I Rhyme Slow" from 1992:

At one point tonight, our phone buzzed and it was our brother in Arizona, calling from the nursing home, where our mom, in the terminal stages of Alzheimer's, was having a rare moment of lucidity. We made our way to the less noisy corner of Lafayette and Tompkins where people would have seen a 60yo man shouting, "Hi Mom, I'm at a hip-hop show in Brooklyn, New York!"

"That's great!" our mom said with real enthusiasm.

She was right. It really was great.

Wednesday Evening in Brownsville: SummerStage presents Special Ed at Betsy Head Park

After spending a few weeks in Phoenix, we discovered it was even hotter (or at least felt it) when we returned to Brooklyn to catch the old school rapper and Flatbush native Special Ed tonight at Betsy Head Park (or Playground, to those of who go way back) in Brownsville.

It was a great show with a surprisingly large crowd, given the high temperature. The rhymes in Special Ed's classic "I Got It Made"

still sound fresh decades later;

no wonder why it's the penultimate lyric in Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois's Anthology of Rap, which we've used in our classes.

This was the second night in the SummerStage season-long series of events at parks in all five boroughs and on their main venue at Rumsey Playfield in Central Park.

At their tent we got a copy of their book

featuring the SummerStage schedule of many amazing shows from here on until early September.

Special Ed opened with the inevitable "Is Brooklyn in the house?" before saying hi to Brownsville and invoking the Flatbush of his upbringing (ours too; sixty years ago we were a four-day-old infant hanging out just seven blocks from here at Brookdale [then Beth-El] Hospital) waiting for our bris on June 11, 1951.

He gave shoutouts to Erasmus and Tilden and his own high school, South Shore (our youngest brother's too) and for us, the show was great. Being awash in nostalgia can be refreshing on a night like tonight.

We last saw Special Ed a couple of summers ago at the Crooklyn Dodgers reunion show in Prospect Park, and the Jamaican-American hip-hop star was again in good form tonight, bringing back memories of the late 80s and the 90s. No longer kinda young, Special Ed's tongue speaks maturity more than ever.

Surprise guests included neighborhood natives Rack-Lo and Smoothe da Hustler, the inventive UG and Phantasm from Cella Dwellas.

With a great DJ behind him and bringing on Romey Rome to show off his moves without showing signs of age, Special Ed put on a terrific show at Betsy Head.

The crowd appreciated it. This neighborhood is often underserved in many ways by the city.

As Special Ed noted, he shot a video right by the el station just outside the park on Livonia Avenue. This area, and the surrounding communities, have contributed so much to American culture.

We saw Roy Ayers here at Betsy Head last year, and it's great of SummerStage to bring a few nights of free open-air shows to the Ville again.

Thursday Night in Bed-Stuy: Doug E. Fresh with DJ Dee Whiz at Von King Park

Tonight at Von King Park in Bed-Stuy,

we attended what seemed more like a raucous, fun-filled old school house party

than a show in the Summerstage concert series, presided over by the original human beat box, Doug E. Fresh with the able assistance of DJ Dee Wiz.

Audience members were literally grooving in the aisles to the backdrop of what seemed like the soundtrack of our lives,

or at least those of us - and we turn one year shy of sixty tomorrow - who can still remember what must be music ancient history to the young people in the audience.

Doug E. Fresh introduced his young son soon after he first came out and he said this was going to be a "family show."

Later his somewhat older sons came out and did their thing, but Doug also said he wanted the feel of a neighborhood party in Brooklyn, especially with Island People and those of us who are "Straight-Up Brooklyn."

In this he and DJ Dee Wiz succeeded beyond anything we'd ever really seen at a SummerStage city park concert because the audience was an integral part of the show,

every bit as much as the old-school hip-hop, pop and reggae standards from the 70s and 80s that we partied to.

The audience was filled with people of all ages, including little kids bopping around.


DJ Dee Wiz got the audience up

and moving early.

Some b-boys did their thing in front of the stage early.

There's a good view of the amphitheater at Von King Park from the rafters.

The Red Bull girls were out giving away cold caffeinated drinks as they did last night at Betsy Head Park.

Egypt, who's back on WBLS 10-3 weekdays following Steve Harvey's show, introduced Doug E. Fresh.

He had such an ease with his audience. There were a lot of "hands up" moments.

"Feel free to enjoy yourself," he told the crowd as we listened to everything from "One Love" to "A B C" in addition to old-school hip-hop.

He asked for those 25 and over, 35 and over, 45 and over. We fit into the "50 and better" category "who understand real old-school" and we were far from the only ones.

"Brooklyn likes it loud," Doug E. Fresh said.

It was a real party evening, and we're grateful for SummerStage for bring us Doug E. Fresh, who's not only a great entertainer

but who seems like a first-rate human being.