House Music and Awkward San Francisco Jokes: AM/TM's "Who's Afraid of Monty Luke?"

David Lewinsky

Producer and DJ Monty Luke is the inspiration for a new song and video.

​Recording together as AM/TM, S.F. house producers Anthony Mansfield and Tal M. Klein reference a funky bunch that includes Bob Villa, Ecstasy, Maury Povich, Lower Haight staples like Rosamunde Sausage Grill's Tuesday burgers, and the man specifically named in their new falsetto-peppered track "Who's Afraid of Monty Luke?"

Luke, a producer and DJ who runs his own label, Black Catalogue, called the Bay Area and its music scene home before moving to Detroit a few years ago. He doesn't quite get why his old buddies would make a song for him.

"Yeah, when they told me about it, I didn't know what to think," he says from his perch in the Midwest. "And I still don't. However, I did agree to doing a remix for it, so there's that. But it's definitely some insanely inside joke that I'm not even in on. Kinda awkward."

"To be truthful," confirms Mansfield, "it started as a joke." He and Klein were talking about making a tune that was a nod to Claude VonStroke's popular 2006 cut "Who's Afraid of Detroit?"

"Without getting into too many details, the premise of this song is to punish Monty for moving to Detroit from San Francisco," adds Klein. "But really, it's all about all the stream-of-conciousness stuff people say/sing on top of a four on the floor beat. This track is a culmination of our unrequited love for Monty and our homage to decades of people yelling random shit about house on shitty house records."

The AM/TM song is available as a 10-inch vinyl recording from Klein's Aniligital Music label, backed with Luke's remix. There's also a new video:

If the dance sequence and James Brown cameo look a little bit familiar, they come from Dan Aykroyd's 1983 flick Doctor Detroit. It's a good choice, but we're hoping for a remix video starring Monty Luke in his own choreographed take.

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