Punk’s hotbed; Village folkies’ basket stack; electronic juice-pumper to Bronx block parties; inspiration to Sinatra, The Strokes, Dillinger, Beastie Boys, Odyssey; skyline behind countless other musical movements… From Year Zero to Ground Zero, New York City has been the beating heart behind too many artistic hollers to name. Though it’s tempting to think of NYC as home for youth revolts of the 60s and beyond, Watch The Closing Doors takes us back to the middle of the 20th Century and the rumblings of an underground cool waiting to explode.
Opening with Duke Ellington’s Take The “A” Train is a master-stroke: a reminder of the iconic transport system that runs arterial through the city. Closing with a visceral reading of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl leaves us dangling on a precipice, as late 50s New York found itself unable to contain the wild abandon of its city’s youth.
Of course, that’s a perceived problem the city’s continually faced, right up to Mayor Giuliani’s clean-up act of recent decades. But what’s most astonishing about this collection is the wide range of revolutions going on in what is, largely, seen as a quiet 15 years in NYC’s musical history. But look closer: Miles Davis was birthing the cool; Cab Calloway had laid down Minnie The Moocher – a template for Lou Reed’s street tales-gone-chic; Pete Seeger’s Almanac Singers had drawn up the trad folk template later embraced by Dave Van Ronk and then stolen, turned inside-out by Dylan. Like hip-hop in the 70s, 50s doo wop grew from the city’s street corners, and Paragons’ Twilight shines from a group that more than lived up to their name.
Compiled by the ever-meticulous Kris Needs, the sleevenotes are, naturally, worth the price of purchase alone. You could almost think of this collection as a book with a pair of free CDs. Thankfully, however, it’s the first in a six-part series that sets out to – for the first time ever, as far as we know – chronicle the entire span of NYC’s musical history, right up to the 00s. It’s a mind-melting exercise that, by its very nature, will result in one of the most fascinating compilations series we’ve ever encountered.
