Those Damn Beatles; Concrete TV; The Dropkick Murphys, Reach the Sky and Lars and the Bastards at Wetlands; C.J. Sullivan Live!

Some fans are buying two copies of The Beatles Story?one to put on their coffee tables, the other to hide away in its slipcase, so it can appreciate like a Dale Earnhardt commemorative plate. Bruce Spizer started publishing his books independently last year and has netted $200,000 thus far.

"It is nice to actually owe the IRS some money," he says. A tax attorney, Mr. Spizer financed the Beatles project entirely with his own cash.

"A little over four years ago I got a huge settlement for a group of retirees, and a good-sized legal fee," he explains from his law office in New Orleans. "With that money, I started seriously collecting Beatles memorabilia. I discovered so many inaccuracies in the history of the Beatles in America that I began financing this book... It's a coffee-table book but it's also a well-researched book and discography."

Spizer will be signing at the Kips Bay Borders (576 2nd Ave. at 32nd St., 685-3938) on Weds., March 14, 7 p.m., and at Revolver Records (45 W. 8th St., betw. 6th Ave. & MacDougal St., 982-6760), 5-7 p.m. on Thursday. He's also at the NJ Crowne Plaza Meadowlands Hotel Fri.-Sun. for Beatlefest 2001 (1-800-BEATLES for tickets, prices are $19-$56).

...If you've been in enough bars on Thursday nights, chances are you've seen Concrete TV, the monumental cable access show that consists of car crashes, motorcycle chases, gunfights, hardcore porn, Chippendale's stage footage and blips of dialogue cut together in half-hour action-movie montages. The show is favored by bartenders, because you can leave the sound off and it's just as mesmerizing for drunks.

Concrete TV has been around since 1994, when creator Ron Rocheleau's cable access sitcom ("It was bad because I was on drugs") began evolving into a "music video show." "I thought, what would it be like to make a movie with all cliches? So I started pasting cliches together, with background music, and that's what became Concrete TV," says Ron.

Rolling Stone cited the show as a "Hot Pick" in 1996, and MTV came on the scene. But things didn't work out. "They offered me this shitty gig to do Concrete TV with all footage from the MTV archive. You know how they are. They wanted 'Behind the Scenes on the Making of Behind the Scenes.' I told them: this isn't interesting. This is bad."

MTV stopped calling, but Ron soldiered on, producing?to date?17 episodes of Concrete TV that he constantly edits and rotates, so you literally never see the same show twice.

Unfortunately, some cheap imitators have cropped up. Public Sex Acts, Liebography and Media Shower are three local cable shows that crib heavily from the Concrete TV formula. Public Sex Acts is the worst, with no continuity, shaky camerawork and a total lack of public sex. Liebography is story-oriented, with each show devoted to a figure like Calvin Klein, but it's made by a Concrete TV devotee who recycles the same clip format. And Media Shower, which features "odd, rare, or unsettling video," is the yuppie Concrete TV for people who have not yet discovered the real thing.

"There are many imitators," Ron says. "But when I've seen the shows, they're not very good... I can spend four-five hours on a few seconds of [Concrete TV]. I come from a fine arts background. So I have the patience to put it together slowly, and if I mess up, I start again. They don't have that patience.

"It's like, you know if you have a phat beat, people are going to steal it. All you can try to do is make it so good that you outshine all the imitators."

Don't be fooled. The real Concrete TV airs Thursdays at 1 a.m. on MNN (channel 67, in Manhattan only).

...The Dropkick Murphys, Reach the Sky and Lars and the Bastards (featuring Lars Frederiksen of Rancid) play Wetlands this Friday (161 Hudson St. at Laight St., 386-3600). You probably know about the Dropkick Murphys and Lars?the former play the best punk/traditional-Irish hybrid out there, the latter added sparkling 50s leads to Rancid's greatest albums. As for Reach the Sky, they're an emo/hardcore act from Boston, who formed in 1997 and have already clocked in 400 shows. (Rage Against the Machine managed fewer than 300 in their 10-year pseudo career.)

"We did five or six [shows] a month when we started out," says singer Ian Larrabee. "We'd drive 15 hours to Louisville, Atlanta and Florida on the weekend?three shows a weekend. We intend to spend this whole year on the road, now that we have the new van."

Reach the Sky's latest record, Friends, Lies, and the End of the World, comes out March 20 with 12 tracks and 32 minutes. It holds up, sounding like Snapcase, Quicksand and the rest of the bands that owe their lives to Helmet. Ian sings convincingly about girls messing him up, and Bob Mahoney's drumming is fierce. Go punch some people in the head.

...This Friday, St. Patrick's Eve, New York Press' C.J. Sullivan is reading from his "Bronx Stroll" column as part of "Bold New World: A Celebration of the New York Immigrant Experience." That's over at Musicians Local 802 (322 W. 48th St., betw. 8th & 9th Aves., 431-0233 x440); the program begins at 8 p.m. and includes readings by Colum McCann (This Side of Brightness) and T.J. English (Born to Kill: The Rise and Fall of America's Bloodiest Asian Gang). There'll also be a slide show by the irrepressible Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

...Mini-blurbs from my Saturday night on the Lower East Side: The Raven Cafe (194 Ave A., betw. 12th & 13th Sts., 529-4712), still a reliable place to start your evening, attracted a stag businessmen and grunge-heads with pretty girlfriends. Average prices, DJ-supervised rock and video games tided me over until a Danish girl picked me up and brought me to Forbidden City (212 Ave. A, betw. 13th & 14th Sts., 598-0500), which was full of attractive, intelligent foreigners. The recommended drink was sake; the non-sake drinks had a $1 premium but were proper-sized. Two good spots right next to each other, and if you don't care how you're dressed, you can invade both.