I wanted to title this “N.E. Heart Break!” but nah, that’s being too dramatic. Damn, though, for $100 I think I deserve the right to get my theatrics on. My birthday was June 27, so my best friend Lloyd decides it would be dope if we went out on June 29 to see New Edition at the Beacon Theatre in New York.

First off, I had reservations because the Beacon is such a legendary venue but has deteriorated over the years. Personally, I feel with all those shows that come to the theater, they need to put some money into renovations. It really is a rat hole. But New Edition are my absolute favorite group of all time (be it rap, R&B or whatever) and I’ve never been less than amazed any time I’ve seen them onstage.

To this day I still can’t see another group who can give an overall show like N.E. Granted, none of them play instruments — it’s just pure singing and dancing — but to match the excitement level of their shows, you’d have to resurrect John Lennon to rejoin the Beatles or get Michael Jackson to grow his afro back and team up with at least four of his brothers. That’s at full strength, though: Ralph Tresvant, Michael Bivins, Ron DeVoe, Johnny Gill and Ricky Bell. Throw in group co-founder and rotating member Bobby Brown and none of the legends out there are going to be able to compete with N.E. That’s just the gospel according to S. Dot Reid.

So let’s get back to Friday. K-Ci & JoJo opened. I had my reservations about those two as well. Let me preface it by saying Jodeci is another one my favorite groups ever. They probably fall right behind Guy at number three, but the last couple of times I saw them perform, it has been a train wreck. I’m going to keep it real — the brothers Hailey need to get focused when they hit that stage. On Friday they sounded horrible.

That’s hard for me to say because I remember when they were great in the early ’90s. I remember playing the album The Show, the After Party, the Hotel every day in the summer of 1995 along with Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx LP. Well, on Friday, I was sitting there with Lloyd and another childhood friend of mine, Lanice, asking, When is somebody going to let K-Ci and JoJo join their search party? because those two couldn’t find a note. I had to even ask Lanice at one point if they were even attempting to sing.

I don’t know. Far be it from me to criticizing singing, because I know I can’t carry a tune myself, but like I said, for $100, I would sure hope to see somebody onstage who could do more than hop on one leg across the stage and poorly imitate Tupac, which is what K-Ci did. (I can’t front, it was actually funny as hell.) I need to hear some of the JoJo soul, some of that K-Ci raspy funk, not raspy junk. Then what took the cake is that they only sang a couple of Jodeci songs. No disrespect to what they did as a duo, but the people at the Beacon wanted to hear “Stay,” “Forever My Lady,” “Come Talk to Me” and “Feenin’.” Damn it, we wanted our “Feenin’ “! But instead we got K-Ci wearing black dress socks over white tube socks struggling through “Life.”

OK, so we survived half of Jodeci. It was cool because everyone knew what N.E. were going to bring to the table. Twenty-four years and counting and they are still excellent performers. Believe it or not, they are close to 40 (Ron said he was 39!) and can still wipe the floor with all these young boy groups that are out today. They don’t stop dancing.

Anyway, the lights went out, the music started and I see Johnny Gill, Mike Biv, Rick Bell and DeVoe. No Ralph T., but my Spidey sense didn’t go off because I’m thinking, “He’s the lead singer, he has to make a grand entrance.” So when it was two songs into the set and no Tresvant, I just got deflated because I knew he wasn’t coming out.

Lo and behold, they make the announcement Ralph is sick and that they thought about canceling the show but decided to keep on because of their love for the fans. On one hand, you wanna go home, but on the other hand you want to give them a shot at doing their thing. I’ve actually had the chance to see them perform a few times over the past three years, so I figured why not see how they do without Ralph.

Long story short, nobody complained about the four members’ ability to hold their own without their lead singer (after all, Johnny Gill and Ricky Bell can sing just as well if not better than Ralph) — no, what some were salty about is that the show wasn’t long at all. An 8 p.m. start time, with K-Ci & JoJo opening, then two songs by the contestants on this season’s “Making the Band 4,” then New Edition. All that and we were outside the Beacon on the way to the club by 10:30? Are you kidding me? What really fried my rice is that they could have definitely gone at least another 20 minutes with records they didn’t perform, like “Boys to Men” or “I Thought It Was Me” (she was sticking closer to me than the bread on the meat in my sandwich).

Oh well, I was entertained by N.E. but didn’t get my money’s worth. For $100 (and I don’t even buy tickets to shows like that — most of the time the record labels or artists hook me up) I wanted to be leaving out of the Beacon at least by midnight.