By Sean Murphy
With summer fast approaching, what better time for a walking tour centered on Brooklyn’s musical past?

As early as 1940, Brooklyn was home to one of the liveliest music scenes in the nation. Though their proprietors have passed into the sands of time, most of the buildings remain — some derelict and almost forgotten, others as well maintained as ever. Come experience what once was… and what may be again.

2001 Odyssey (802 64th St.)

Located in what would eventually become Brooklyn’s Chinatown (then eastern Bay Ridge), 2001 Odyssey was indistinguishable at first glance from thousands of startup, primarily suburban discos that thrived in the late 70s. This changed when it became the setting for some of Saturday Night Fever’s most memorable sequences. Although a Midtown sister location failed to entice Manhattan’s dance connoisseurs, the beat remained steady on 64th Street for another 28 years, many of those spent as the gay club Spectrum. The famous lighted floor — installed specifically for the film — survived several changes in ownership and was eventually auctioned off when the venue was razed in 2005.

46th Street Rock Palace [A.K.A Universal Theater; Loew’s 46th Street Theater] (4515 New Utrecht Ave.)

Faced with the double whammy of eroding ticket sales and the effects of years of deferred maintenance, many theater owners opted to let yesteryear’s cinemas die in a haze of bad exploitation films as the 1970s dawned. But necessity is the mother of invention, and the savvy proprietor of this Borough Park movie house — perhaps recalling the success of the Paramount and Fox’s early rock and roll revues — saw a niche for a Fillmore East-style rock venue in what was then regarded as Brooklyn’s southern hinterland. Thus, Loew’s 46th Street Theater was reborn as the 46th Street Rock Palace. (The inscrutable “Banana Fish Garden� was also used.) Between 1969 and 1973, the venue hosted The Byrds (in their final incarnation featuring Clarence White), Hot Tuna, Country Joe McDonald, a resurgent Jerry Lee Lewis, and the Grateful Dead in their lone Brooklyn engagement. Interestingly, many of the shows were held on weekday afternoons.

In its final year as a rock hall, the theater served as the home of Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, which older readers will remember as a mainstay of ABC’s late night programming throughout the 1970s. Despite profiting from the switch — a commentator on cinematreasures.org claims that extensive renovations were scheduled in 1973, — the Rock Palace abruptly closed that year, allegedly caving in to pressure from the area’s burgeoning Hasidic community.

Since then, part of the theater has been leased as a furniture store, although theater buffs assert that 90 percent of the venue remains intact.

The Shirt House (435A 9th St.)

For every Patti Smith, David Byrne, and Tom Verlaine that emerged from New York’s halcyon punk rock scene of the mid-70s, there were at least four musicians who failed to sustain a career. Arguably the textbook case of this phenomenon, The Shirts were true nonconformists lost in a sea of stylized rebellion, uneasily bridging the last vestiges of the ‘60s counterculture with indie-prefiguring angular guitars.

While nearly all of the early punk acts sublimated the better elements of mid-to-late ‘60s rock into their sound, the Brooklyn-based sextet stood alone in proudly flaunting this recent history for the entire world to see. Thirty years on, the harmonies of frontwoman Annie Golden, guitarist/keyboardist Arthur Laimoca, and bassist Robert Racioppo seem to pick up where the Jefferson Airplane left off in 1969. News traveled slowly in the pre-Internet age. When the band decided to commit their attention to original material after seeing Patti Smith play during a then-rare Manhattan foray, the musicians and their associates had been living communally at a characteristically unostentatious Park Slope house for several years. Band cohabitation was not entirely anomalous — the Talking Heads and Blondie both shared downtown lofts in their early starving days to save expenses, after all — but The Shirts erred towards the anachronistic Haight-Ashbury extreme. In the process, their home became a de facto community center for many Slopeians and a number of other Brooklyn bands. These included Greenpoint’s own Rice Miller Band, a traditional blues outfit that regularly foiled The Shirts’ comparatively modern sound in concert.

The Shirts were one of CBGB’s owner Hilly Kristal’s favorite bands and were pegged as a breakout group by Billboard. They ascended to the top of the charts with hits like “Tell Me Your Plans� and “Laugh And Walk Away�… in the Netherlands.

Since the group broke up in 1984, Golden has eked out a moderately successful acting career, most recently appearing as an understudy in the Broadway adaptation of Xanadu. A reconstituted lineup released the LP Only the Dead Know Brooklyn to generally positive reviews in 2006.

Perhaps most emblematic of the changes fostered by the past 20 years, The Shirt House is now home to a mortgage brokerage and offices of New York Methodist Hospital.

Brooklyn Paramount Theater (385 Flatbush Ave. Extension) and Fox Theater (10 Flatbush Ave.) The granddaddies of Brooklyn music history, these opulent movie theaters helped to usher in the modern era of popular music for thousands of concertgoers. The French Renaissance-styled Paramount hosted the likes of Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, and Frank Sinatra in weeklong runs throughout the 1940s. By the turn of the decade, Paramount Pictures was forced to relinquish its interest in the namesake theater chain; as it was sold to a subsidiary of television/radio network ABC, live performances became even more prominent. Throughout the late 1950s, it hosted legendary (and eventually disgraced) DJ Alan Freed’s package tours, introducing the rhythms of Bo Diddley and the plaintive harmonies of Buddy Holly and the Crickets to a generation of young Brooklynites. Before long, the competing 4,088-seat Fox Theater — located only a short walk away from the Paramount — began to host similar package shows under the auspices of self-proclaimed “Fifth Beatle� Murray the K. Neither the Paramount nor the Fox were able to weather the film industry’s decline throughout the late 1960s or the emergence of self-contained rock tours. The Gothic-style Fox — never entirely solvent to begin with because of the proximity of the beloved Paramount — was demolished in 1970. Today, the site is home to Con Ed. In an interesting twist, the Paramount exists in an oblique form to this day. Converted into a gymnasium by Long Island University, the hall still sports its prized Wurlitzer organ — and ever so frequently hosts rock and roll revival shows with reconfigured seating.

Mel Cheren’s Brownstone (240 Warren St.)

Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, Mel Cheren’s West End Records stood at the vanguard of dance music. Songs like Taana Gardner’s “Heartbeat,� Arthur Russell’s “Is It All Over My Face?� and the Peech Boys’ “Don’t Make Me Wait� were the immediate antecedent of the Chicago house sound, also proving to be endless sample fodder for the first generation of hip-hop producers. For much of that era, Cheren lived in this modest Cobble Hill home, purchased as a fixer-upper with then-companion Michael Brody in the early 70s. As he details in his 1999 memoir, My Life at the Paradise Garage, the serenity of his neighborhood and the nearby Esplanade was a welcome, inspiring respite from music-biz machinations. Unfortunately, the fallout from the subsequent collapse of West End forced Cheren to divest himself of the building. Though he never reclaimed the property, the self-proclaimed “Godfather of Disco� managed to successfully relaunch his record label before dying of AIDS-related complications in December 2007.

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