Watch The Closing Doors

Watch the Closing Doors - A History of New York's Musical Melting Pot is a six-volume series of double CDs from Year Zero that attempts to document the varied twists and turns of New York City music from the postwar 1940s through the dawn of the 21st century in 2000. Assembled and annotated by journalist, author, and scholar Kris Needs, it's an ambitious and lovingly assembled archive that sees itself as a sort of search-and-rescue project as the city's musical landmarks, both physical and cultural, morph, change, and often vanish completely as one century marches into the next. It's all very impressive and it feels important, and it might well be the best audio history of what the city has been singing, playing, and building on in the past four-plus decades -- but in the end it's really an elaborate playlist, and luckily, it's a fun and considered one. Any set that includes Duke Ellington ("Take the `A' Train"), Frankie Lymon ("Why Do Fools Fall in Love"), the Five Satins ("In the Still of the Night"), the New Lost City Ramblers ("How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live"), Thelonious Monk ("Brilliant Corners"), Charles Mingus ("Goodbye Pork Pie Hat"), and even Allen Ginsberg (reading his poem "Howl") is casting the net high, wide, and deep -- and here we're only talking about the first volume in the series, which covers 1945 to 1959. ~ Steve Leggett