The Red Album of Asbury Park Remixed by Alex Austin

The setting: Springsteen-land in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a once thriving seaside getaway, now a rundown hulk of decaying buildings, degenerates, dive bars, thieves, decrepit amusements, gangsters and junkies. Vet Sam Nesbitt has just got out of the military  intact. He’s one of the lucky ones. War’s horrors have given him a worldview that goes beyond Ocean Avenue. He wants out. He wants to make something of himself, to escape the ghosts of days past, and not become another lost cause walking the streets of Asbury Park. Nesbitt’s hope is music. He has the goods as a guitarist  and harbors dreams of that hit album that will get him the hell out of New Jersey. Except the music is too much of an escape. It’s a pipe dream that bursts whenever confronted by all the obstacles surrounding Sam. Instead of bringing glory, Sam’s efforts become an endless series of letdowns—bad gigs, continuous debt, medical mishaps, band breakups, missed opportunities—that far outweigh those nights where everything goes right. He wants to be big –Pete Townshend big—but he has to survive Asbury first. Witnessing the tail end of a murder on his first night in town, Sam keeps his distance from the crime’s investigation. He wants nothing to do with the cops. The murder crashes back into his life, threatening to crush his family and blow apart his career.Throughout the novel, no matter how hard Sam pushes towards the dream, his family, or the local gangsters, or the women who don’t want him as much as he wants them, or the crime that he witnessed on his first night back, pull the bottom out from under him, dropping him to the pavement. Each time he dusts himself off and jumps back into the fray. If he’s not a hero, he’s the only guy in town who hasn’t given up even if he’s the only one who knows it’s worthless to even try. As in the novels of Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff and Jayne Anne Phillips, The Red Album of Asbury Park Remixed  uses a matter-of-fact tone, blunt, realistic dialogue, and graphic descriptions of violence to reflect Sam's world. Woven into the story are songs of contemporary Asbury Park musicians. Songs of passion, struggle, chaos, longing, love and dreams.