Description
Book SynopsisIn Menergy, author Louis Niebur offers a fascinating new look at gay history through the sounds of San Francisco's queer nightlife. In doing so he also reveals new insights in the history of electronic music and dance music.
Trade ReviewThis book's title, Menergy, evokes the gay culture that Niebur (musicology, Univ. of Nevada, Reno) seeks to restore and narrate, but the title also borrows Patrick Cowley's song "Menergy" (1981), which Nieber writes "is probably the defining track of the high energy San Francisco sound" (p. 8). Disco was more a part of a cultural scene than a specific musical genre in San Francisco's Castro, inextricably linked with gay male clone culture. The author is especially effective when presenting cultural phenomena and context for disco-its drugs, sex, reflections on gay liberation, hypermasculinity, materialism, exclusions, racism, and ultimately-in the early 1980s-the devastation and horror of HIV/AIDS. * Choice *
The deepest dig into San Francisco disco and Hi-NRG music history yet! Riding high off gay liberation, Menergy takes the reader on a rollercoaster of a ride through a magically creative time in Castro and SoMa clubs and recording studios. Most profoundly, this detailed journey shows the influence the 'San Francisco Sound' had on the world. * Josh Cheon, Dark Entries Records *
Niebur's pioneering, deeply researched history reveals what queer pleasure, loss, identity, and tenacity sound like in their own time and place. A rich reminder that we can't stop dancing. * Joshua Gamson, author of The Fabulous Sylvester *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: Setting Up the Sound Chapter One: Disco, the Castro and Gay Liberation Chapter Two: Liberation for Some: The Continued Expansion of Gay San Francisco in the late 1970s Chapter Three: Sylvester's Fantasy Comes True Chapter Four: The First Wave of the San Francisco Sound Chapter Five: Blecman and Hedges Chapter Six: Disco's Dead/Not Dead Chapter Seven: The San Francisco Sound Thrives Chapter Eight: New Heights Chapter Nine: Trouble in Paradise Chapter Ten: Dancing with AIDS Chapter Eleven: Everything Falls Apart Chapter Twelve: In Retrospect Suggested Reading Selected Discography Index
