Montauk Pioneer - May 15, 2009 - Concert Proposed To CAC

At the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee meeting, which is held on the first Monday of every month at the Montauk School Library, a proposal was made to host a large name concert in the summer time. The concert would be done to raise money for the deficit the Town of East Hampton has run up, which Montauk is a part of. It was proposed by Artie Schneider, who is the owner of the Memory Motel, at the end of the meeting. Mr. Schneider did not offer any real serious plan other than the intriguing idea to the Citizens Advisory Committee, and it was met with intrigue, but also a plethora of expectations from Mr. Schneider, which of course, reasonably includes a serious proposal requiring serious effort on the part of Mr. Schneider to move forward.

The idea brought back to many that were involved, memories of "A Night At The Ranch" concerts, which featured huge acts such as Billy Joel and Paul Simon. Such performers are two performers that Mr. Schneider had in mind and brought up at the Citizens Advisory Committee meeting.

Larraine Creegan of the Montauk Chamber of Commerce said, "As it was presented to the CAC it was vague with no specific proposal. I am not inclined to give a nay or yea on the idea. I would like more information about it, price, location, headliners, transportation etc. I want to see a written proposal for the entire event before I will make a further comment."

A Montauk resident who did not want to be identified went on to say, "A lot is involved in putting on a Billy Joel concert on such a large scale. The concerts that we had in the 90s were definitely poorly run and my guess is that if you want to put on a concert in Montauk, you are going to have to be well prepared because they actually stopped doing those concerts in the 90s because of the poor management. A lot of people liked those concerts back then. I'm all for a new concert series if its planned well."

Mr. Schneider referred to his experience of the "Night At The Ranch" concerts in the 90s, which were criticized for their lack of organization, traffic and disorderly conduct of people at the event. "I don't know the specifics of the Deep Hollow Ranch series and what went wrong but if they were so great why did they end after 10 years? Don't get me wrong, I went to every show and loved them all but something must of went wrong or this would have been their 20th year."

The idea floated by Mr. Schneider of bringing back a concert to Montauk at the meeting has already created some momentum within the community. Mr. Schneider believes that the feedback he has gotten from people about the proposal to throw a concert could lead to it moving forward and is taking the first steps toward building a serious proposal and presentation.

"Yes I think it could happen," says Schneider. "Especially in these difficult times regarding the economic condition of the town. I spent many years preparing for this and speaking with the right people over the years so yes I think that the MCCC will be ok with it."

Mr. Schneider hinted that he was looking into gaining corporate sponsorship for the event, "I have a few corporate sponsors in mind but would like to keep them confidential for now," he said.

As far as actually having Billy Joel or Paul Simon come back to perform in Montauk, nothing has moved forward but Mr. Schneider explained that the idea was too new to make that step. "I have not contacted either Billy or Paul yet but this is still too soon to bother them. I will reach out to their management when the time is right."