Description
About the Author
Louis Niebur is Associate Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. His research explores popular music of the post-war era, including the significance of music to LGBTQ communities, particularly as it has shifted between live music, the jukebox, and the disc jockey in the context of queer spaces. He is also author of Special Sound: The Creation and Legacy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (OUP, 2010).
Reviews
This 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 *
Awards
Winner of Shortlisted, 2023 Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Awards.
Book Information
ISBN 9780197511084
Author Louis Niebur
Format Paperback
Page Count 280
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 406g
Dimensions(mm) 236mm * 155mm * 18mm