Talk to me about Patrick Cowley's 'Menergy'

thanking u for my new screename

happy to help

Several vanguard NYC dance DJs interviewed by Tim Lawrence for Love Saves The Day: A History Of American Dance Music Culture 1970-1979 express lingering disgust for what the word disco came to stand for, as record labels big and small flooded the market with inferior product, and clubs new and old got shittier---one guy even says he agrees (20-odd years later) that disco sucks.
Nicky Siano didn't want Soul Jazz Records to put "Disco" in the title of his pre-fad comp, which is still worth checking out---I described it briefly in the Voice:

Siano the Times
Mercury rising as disco evolves out of prior knowledge x convictions
by Don Allred
January 11th, 2005 2:14 PM Issue 02

Blissed-out, but not always totally
photo: Courtesy of Nicky Siano
Nicky Siano's Legendary the Gallery: New York's Original Disco 1973-1977
Soul Jazz import

In the early '70s, a teenage DJ named Nicky Siano traveled the space-wise
dancefloor of David Mancuso's Loft---officially DM's lowercase residence, via invitation-only rent parties
---before launching his own Gallery.
Despite acid, balloons, and the food bar, the Gallery wasn't always
totally blissed-out. As described in his and Tim Lawrence's CD notes,
Siano's Mancuso-influenced (though more commercial) sound design for living was also logically
based on and changing with the rooms and scenes he mixed in,
as the feast moved around NYC, not always voluntarily.

(Galleryite Larry Levan later levitated Paradise Garage; he and Siano
also worked with disco mystic Arthur Russell.)

The Gallery first materialized in the summer of '73.
Post-Woodstock couch-potato arena rock ruled. There and elsewhere,
DIY DJs and dancers (especially blacks, Latinos, gays) were among those,
at times closely observed,
who chose to carve their own solar systems from the vinyl beast.
Spinning out of this disc, the Gallery is mercury still rising, through
crosstown funk, soul, roots rock, and one gospel song, personalized:
Gloria Spencer proclaims,
"I got it! I don't understand it! I got it!" A jet blasts (like, "Amen!") out
of Exuma's "Obeah Man." The Temptations lay down the "Law of the Land":
"You might not like who you are, but you better start. 'Cause you sure can't be
nobody else." Yet the music rumbles and clatters like a roulette wheel.
Meanwhile, turns out that Bonnie Bramlett's "Crazy 'Bout My
Baby" is crazy like a tambourine and a fox, shaking in wait for that slowhand
dobro.

Loleatta Holloway, Bobby Womack, Bill Withers, the Isleys,
and Undisputed Truth also make the most of prior knowledge and surprise.
Without waiting for the remix: These are original (full-length) LP tracks and
seven-inch singles, with built-in dynamics. Breaks burst out of
(and roll through)
good grooves, good songs. Often.
See http://www.nickysiano.com/ and http://www.timlawrence.info/.

also (listening companion to TL's book): https://reappearingrecords.bandcamp.com/album/love-saves-the-day-a-history-of-american-dance-music-culture-1970-1979-part-1 (pts 1 & 2 have sep bandcamp pages; 2-CD incl. both pts.)

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Siano did mix, and chose some records later that did sound like what we typically think of as "disco"---hell, he even worked Studio 54 for a while, when the owners were running it from jail cells for the US Gov, I think---but this is where he came from, and wanted it known, Revolta and the Bee Gees aside.

i'm generally pro "electronic disco history being reclaimed and valorized by queers today" and absolutely love the music all-around but also feel like it can tip a little bit over into the monoculture of the mustachioed men of the time but transplanted into today. a minor gripe as i mime the poppers fueled buttsex crescendo in the soulwax remix of "you make me feel (mighty real)" for the hundredth time.

― ꙮ (map)

idk. i had some resentment for the guys with their BDE cavorting on the dancefloor in jockstraps four years ago, i admit. i felt like "menergy" didn't leave a lot of room for... like, there's femmes and there's women. all the backlash against the stereotype that "gay = femme" left me feeling a little bit out of place as someone who's a woman (but not particularly femme) who was, at the time, far more interested in femmes.

fuck it. i'm past carrying grudges. we're all in this together, is how i feel. also, while i still prefer femmes, goddamn some mascs are fucking hot. the dancefloor isn't the same without 'em.

fuck it. i'm past carrying grudges. we're all in this together, is how i feel.

yep. absolutely. i feel this way more and more. still have some remnants of grudge but it sure does feel great to shed them. meanwhile i'm in a relationship with a younger man who is generally very open-minded on these topics and has already been exposed to a wide variety of opinions, as is the case with young people today it seems. but the other day expressed some reservations about kids being exposed to kink in the context of pride. which, i wasn't prepared to respond in a constructive way, so i just let it slide. i do hope i can radicalize him a little bit. but without a particular agenda other than love. he's close to his family, who are decent but conservative. it's tricky. i feel like i'm always stretching myself when it comes to trying to find more gentleness and patience these days. but sometimes it's like, here i am, orphaned from my owm family of origin and on my own out here at sea making what feels like a wild and desperate voyage, just trying to survive and land occasionally on a beautiful island that always turns out to be hostile in some critical way, and the people i find along the way are always separated from all of that to a degree. part of that is living in a conservative, patriarchal place and wanting to connect anyway. part of it is being attracted to masc. i often feel like i'm in a riddle that deepens with each passing year. at this point i don't think there's a solution, and i'm not sure if i need or want one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzjIKdMvPkY

xp but anyway, 'menergy'. i always feel like it does that impossible thing so well, trying to outline and appreciate masc. i think about the phrase "laughing it up" a lot. there's a bit of menace to it. the real, honest laughing i do is silly, goofy, flip, sometimes acidic, doesn't have that gendered edge. i want to try to imagine what masc gendered laughing looks like and the faint trace of it i can conjure is unlikely, laughable, a tom of finland cartoon. does it even exist? i spent yesterday evening with two men who are very close to me. one sketched my portrait while we were listening to a scratchy record of 'court and spark' by joni mitchell. the me he drew was stately and masculine but gentle and lonely somehow. we shared a dinner of rigatoni and meatballs made by my partner of 5 years. the mode of conversation we had reflected that of brothers, fathers and sons, but also mothers and sisters. i think it's true that masc can't be real without all of non-masc. it feels really good for gender to be real, for the gender you want in your life to color and flesh out your relationships, to not be frightened of gender and all of its ingredients and complications.

really great posts map

<3