Echoes Albuquerque creates vibrations of life in a fatal vacuum of human indifference
Jake and Alessandra created a mystical diaphragm of healing energy through feminine songwriter vulnerability; existential suffering to fibrillate sound through a conduit of dead air
Downtown Albuquerque has been a low pressure point of evacuating human density since the 1950’s.
Mathematically speaking, regardless of the systemic and very intentional corruption in this shit show of a city, the town center, the nucleus of any human social activity, has been bleeding out for so long, it has reached an observable termination point, and is now being infilled by opposing forces of unprecedented chaos. And it’s not the homeless population.
When Jake Ralphs opened the doors to Echoes Albuquerque, his blood sweat and life passion (music) sucked in nothing but dead air, from a literal and metaphorical vacuum of human density, human safety, and the social infill that organically becomes a thriving community, free of weaponized traffic and indifference to life who reside there.
Jake has to combat both the unfortunate location of lifeless Gold and the late-night shootings that have mysteriously increased in recent weeks. While Jake deflects flying bullets from Gold and elsewhere, Alessandra Barbiero comes to the booking management side of house to restore an acceptable level of cringe with an early 90’s Mall Rats sort of hierarchy to make it just appealing enough, and just barely cozy enough, for singer/songwriter showcases. A beautiful outpouring of vulnerability, emotion, release, and reincarnation from source energy that is divine feminine.
Alessandra’s Women’s Stories showcases have proven to be a huge hit for both Echoes and the women who selflessly shared them, and deservingly so. I experienced one of her Friday showcases and the torrent of emotion, power, and harnessed F5 energy the songwriters wield with their voice and pen, gave me a child-like sense I was in one of the coolest tornadoes ever: the soul of a woman’s vulnerable existence; their truth oblivious to the torrent of external pressure around them.
Jake’s pub and his vision of original, live music always, is slowly coming into view, and if he and Alessandra pull this off, and that is a brutal “if” on Gold Ave and if they live to tell about it, they will have done so with human love, and the only energy that can counter an F5 bleeding out: the truth of a woman’s suffering and the community space needed to perform it. Their truth is for all to hear, publicly. And in honor of such, the masses will come in celebration of acceptance with open arms.
From their Women’s Stories, secrets to ancient powers are delivered in a conduit of vulnerable truth; poetry for all life to consume. Songs of suffering permeate the vacuum with spiritual compressions of love, the human mechanism of sound.
Vibrations in a vacuum can only come from human love. Human healing through music.
Written and performed by survivors of the worst F5 ever: indifference to human life.
Jake and Alessandra (sometimes Brandon), with a big ol’ honorable mention to Tin, may have tapped into the only damn thing that will actually work on Gold, and downtown Albuquerque: a safe space, filled with rock and roll spirits of its past, ushering in a new high pressure era that feels, looks, and sounds like a much-needed amplifier to boost the message; patrons of authentic music, good hops, and a no-nonsense welcoming acceptance of those in the music business to heal. Those in the biz to support the overlooked artist and shadow workers of truth among us.
Songs of suffering permeate the vacuum with spiritual compressions of love, the human mechanism of sound.
Check out Echoes' showcases here
I live downtown again. It is night and day different than my first combat stint here in 2019, well into the lockdown era. It somehow got freakishly worse. Downtown Albuquerque, in failing to evolve in those 80 some odd years of bleeding out since the 50’s, is a literal and metaphorical choke point of frustrated cargo. The obscene and criminal lack of human density yields an absence of life, and in that vacuum, a presence of death. Not dying. Dead already.
Jennifer Joyce, friend, confidant, supreme beta reader (she should seriously be on the payroll), once asked me to clarify a question she had about my last article on the subject and parallels of cities, and life, bleeding out from the core. I will answer her now, here:
It is going to get worse. The triple homicide in an hour a few weeks back is an indicator of increased environmental pressures. And in this case, grossly ignored pressures.
I’ve been residing among the homeless, and like all creatures in nature, my presence has become quite comfortable to them. They track me now; they see me and either follow me or establish an intersecting trajectory to ensure contact. I am comfortable among them, and they me. We all share the same few east and west streets, frustratingly connected at psychotic maddening north and south points on a grid.
If you listen to a pack of wolves in the wild, they are communicating something. A threat. An intruder. Often, they sense a sudden drop in atmospheric pressure that signals their bodies to move; go lay low; or go hunting for unsuspecting moving prey. The pack of homeless, whether knowingly or not, are communicating with me in a deafening conduit of shared aggravation.
I know their language now because I too, have to walk these dangerous streets of maniacal and weaponized automobiles, indifferent to the human life residing here; adding hundreds of aggitators in an already frustrated flow of movement through an idiotic series of traffic signals, timed to keep drivers from racing down Central. Over time, living here, it becomes maddening. In just three months, my anxiety has spiked due to the noise and frustration of living downtown; playing Frogger with the cagers. I have the means to medicate and meditate and grateful for those abilities. I cannot imagine those who don’t, losing their already fragile minds to the senseless and intentional indifference to human life that is the noise pollution, automobile target practice, and sonic assault of downtown life.
Wars are lost on logistical fronts and the main culprit is almost always frustrated cargo in the supply chain; the mental and physical abuse of living in a choke point of community growth during extreme, visible, and blatant social imbalance. But one thing is dismally certain in my territorial observations: we haven’t hit the termination point where wolves become rabid. But the atmospheric pressures are increasing exponentially. Beyond my comprehension.
And this clump of humans have weapons: unregulated rage in caged automobiles among unarmed residents out simply to enjoy the increased vitality downtown.
The rapid expansion of energy during downtown’s imminent development boom will drive the locals (both housed and unhoused) mad in an already frustrated logistical gridlock. It’s maddening and traumatic to live in a downtown area with very little driver’s regard and zero law enforcement of human safety. Street closures are not enforcement; they simply further frustrate the flow of cargo.
It will get better sure, once the money and indifference to human life take over and actually refurb the vacant deathtraps, generate safe and relevant commerce, and bring a residential density to organically push out dead air and psychological chaos. All before doubling the rents, I’m sure.
We’ve all seen this movie before.
With Jake and Alessandra, and sometimes Brandon, Echoes Albuquerque becomes a marquee of safety we can all run to when the downtown sky of indifference turns emerald green in a funnel cloud of senseless, yet preventable violence. Through the vibrations of women’s vulnerability in songwriting and performing, the patrons of Echoes will survive the fatal evacuation of life in a vacuum that is our current and criminal dystopia on Gold and Downtown Albuquerque.
Stringer
