This is an AMAZING reference for the history of Asbury Park...It captures the history in detail with original photographs and even pinpoints the location of historic landmarks so you can see them for yourself! Highly recommended!

Gray Wien had a good Idea but like many of the bands he features in his book it misses the mark.I was a part of that scene and it's a shame Mr. Wien didn't capture the social relevance of these clubs or their patrons. Then again, Mr. Wien was in college during that time. That alone would have made him an outsider in most of the clubs he wrote about. The take home message here is this: there were 3 kinds of bands playing the area in the late eighties,
The "A" list- Springsteen, Bon Jovi, etc.
The "B" list- Dramarama, The Smithereens, Richard Barone
The "C" list- In Between Dreams, The Blases and every other local nobody.
The scene was the same in Boston, Seattle and Washington DC. The main difference is that Springsteen didn't sing about those towns. The Brighton Bar or the Green Parrot was a place you could be yourself. These bars were filled with dreams, romance and failure. One day I woke up, I realized there was a whole wonderful world waiting for me that was different and better than the Jersey shore. Springsteen said it in the seventies, I ignored it in the eighties and lived it in the nineties "It's a town full of loses and I'am pulling out of here to win"