How Good Are They?

The Montauk Bake Shop Band well known in Europe as Suddyn 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TtyH6vG4g4 is as good as a sunny summer morning sitting on a mossy teak bench in the shade of a leafy tree with your best dog, your favorite book of poetry, and a warm, buttery, flaky croissant with a cup of the best coffee brewed in town.

 

The Montauk Bake Shoppe Band is a quartet of keen, musically sophisticated, good-looking, truly friendly and fun twenty-something instrumentalists and vocalists. By day they work behind the counter and in the back of the amazing Montauk Bake Shoppe. They cause tens of thousands of people to smile with anticipation and sigh with confectionary delight. After dark, with their instruments, they do the same thing for smaller but very passionate East End and Manhattan crowds. The Montauk Bake Shoppe Band isn’t afraid of lushness, clarity, melody, anthems, crescendos, creative locales and cool productions. One day they’ll put together The Montauk Bake Shoppe Opera album and become rich. The talented confectioners are Alan Steil on vocals, piano and guitar, his brother Jarrett, on vocals and piano, Colin O Dwyer on bass, and Brendan Connolly on drums. Their new recorded collection is called Gravity. It’s addictive, so be warned. 

 

John Keeshan’s Roses

 

One of the rarest and most whimsically beautiful sights and smells in Montauk are John Keeshan’s roses, in the mossy red brick garden behind a white picket fence next to his office across from the Chamber of Commerce and a few doors up from the bakery. The roses, direct descendents of the roses from The Little Prince, poke their sexually pink faces over and through the pickets. Early in the day when there are still dewdrops on their petals and the sun is big but still gentle, go to John’s garden, be kind, sniff but don’t touch the tender roses, and enjoy the pretty children of a lively mind.

 

Mr. Keeshan reports that his troupe of roses for 2009 are well pampered and set to bloom by June 4, or even a bit earlier.

 

 

“A name-dropper’s Paradise”

 

In the magazine www.Hamptons.com the writer Douglas Harrington reports that Dick Cavett, the author and television personality, who has lived in Montauk since the 1960s, is somewhat distressed by time’s changes to the hamlet.

 

“When I first saw it, I thought it could have been some small western town, only with an ocean attached to it. I was amazed to find out it was actually part of East Hampton Town at the time. Regrettably it has become more like East Hampton, with more of the glitterati." 

 

Mr. Harrington adds: “His [Cavett’s] love of Montauk is palpable as, toward the end of our conversation, he recalled some missed opportunities. “Bette Davis invited me for a weekend once, the Lunts invited me to Switzerland, James Mason, David Niven, I kept turning them down because I couldn't wait to get back to Montauk. I never answered an invite from Ava Gardner, which was a real measure of insanity I suppose. Even though it has become a name-droppers paradise, I miss it so much when I am away from it. I can't wait to get out there, skin cancer risk and all, I love the sun in Montauk, I love the ocean."