Radio Freefall/Albuquerque Indie-rock connection hypothesis shot down

Back in the early to mid-90s, which could be thought of as the post-Nirvana era of rock-n-roll, there was an explosion of indie music and bars that played it. If you were in any medium-sized college town, and Albuquerque was no exception, you would have found yourself choosing on any given night between eight or nine kick-ass bars, and following ten to fifteen local superstar bands, any one of which seemed likely to launch your town into being the next Seattle. It didn't happen, of course, but it was fun to be dream.

In Albuquerque, you had bars like Beyond Ordinary, which tended towards hardcore and techno/industrial, you had the Golden West, which featured a lot of 'punkabilly' and post-punk, and then you had the Dingo bar, which played a lot of blues and roots rock. The El Rey, semi-attached the Golden West, featured the bigger touring shows because of its size. Of course, things weren't that simple, and everyone really played everywhere.

Without giving anything away, I can say that a lot of the plot of Matthew Jarpe's Radio Freefall refers back to a fictional bar rock scene in Albuquerque in the zeroes (ie around now), that looked to me a lot like the real rock scene in the 90s. I had gone so far as to hypothesize that the 'Rio Bar' was in fact based on the Dingo, and that the band Animal Bones was inspired by the Dingo's house blues rock band Alien Lovestock.

Unfortunately, Jarpe e-mailed me that he didn't really spend that much time on the scene and that everything is pretty much made up. Oh well. Still, he must be doing something right if he made me think of it.