Author: Louis Niebur discusses Menergy: San Francisco's Gay Disco Sound

Learn about "high energy," the music genre born in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood, with historians Louis Niebur and Joshua Gamson, in conversation about Niebur’s recent book, Menergy: San Francisco’s Gay Disco Sound. Book sale provided by Fabulosa Books.

Louis Niebur is Professor of Musicology at the University of Nevada, Reno. He received his Ph.D. in musicology from the University of California, Los Angeles. His research areas include avant-garde and popular music of the postwar era, including music in radio, television and film, and the significance of music to LGBTQ communities as it has shifted between live music, the jukebox and the disc jockey in the context of queer spaces. He has delivered and published papers on such topics as San Francisco’s proto-queercore and post-disco scenes, the history of Camp Records and other gay recording labels of the 1960s, electronic television and radio music and sound in Britain, the role of women in early electronic music studios and the queer function of electronic sound production in electronic dance music. His book, Special Sound: The Creation and Legacy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (2010), was the first monograph to situate the BBC’s electronic studio within the context of popular music. His most recent book, Menergy: San Francisco’s Gay Disco Sound (2022), traces the way disco and high energy dance music channeled the spirit of gay liberation through a shared dance-floor experience. 

Joshua Gamson is Professor of Sociology at the University of San Francisco. He is the author of Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America (1994); Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity (1998); The Fabulous Sylvester (2005) and Modern Families: Stories of Extraordinary Journeys to Kinship (2015), along with numerous scholarly articles on social movements, sexualities, and contemporary culture.