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).

• Acknowledgements


• 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

In 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.