In the evening hours of Thursday, Oct. 24, Greenough Hall hosted “Greenoween”. The event took place at Greeno Sub Shop, featuring live music performances from Students for Alternative Music (SALT).
After being blindsided by last-minute cancellations, SALT still managed to put on a sensational event. Students dressed in wild costumes to fit the theme, including cowboys, devils and witches, oh my! Various students put on performances, while food was provided by the Greeno Sub Shop.
Haley Higgins, an anthropology major and senior co-president of SALT, has been a part of the organization for three years and was the brains behind the name “Greenoween.”
SALT is a student-run organization that offers an outlet for students to share their music and perform in front of an audience.
“We are a low stakes, do-it-yourself Registered Student Organization (RSO) that is welcome to all,” Higgins said.
Greenough has an open space in its basement, decorated with graffiti, chalk and an array of tables. SALT has hosted shows in the space once a semester for the past two years.
“People can eat here, they can hang out between sets, it’s a very convenient spot especially for a Thursday, it kind of kicks off the weekend,” Higgins said.
Lilianna Kelly, a senior psychology and gender studies double major at Mount Holyoke College, is an event coordinator and made the commute to UMass for the show. SALT has establishments across all five colleges in the area and members try to support each school’s shows. “All of the schools do shows,” Kelly said.
“We were the first,” Higgins added.
Kelly helps UMass SALT by informing them when other events are happening in the general western Massachusetts area.
Ben Abarca, a mechanical engineering major and senior co-president, has been a part of the organization for four years and mentioned how this event was harder to plan due to a lack of confirmations from different bands.
“Greenough takes care of booking the space,” Abarca said, which leaves SALT to organize the performances and themes, if any. Despite having trouble initially, they ended up having two student performers, known by the stage names of “Hexylix” and “lavenderWake.”
Charlie Mash, also known as “lavenderWake,” who is a plant and soil science major with a minor in gender studies, put on the first performance of not only the night, but of her musical career. Mash started making music during quarantine and has been at it ever since.
“I think it’s really cool that there’s an organization promoting student art because of how important music is to me,” Mash said. “I haven’t been able to find much of a community for electronic music, so being able to perform is really important,” she said.
SALT is not only putting on a show for its audiences, but they are guiding young artists to find their voice through art. “I found a lot of self-expression through music, so being able to have this outlet is very nice,” Mash said.
Mash said she had nerves going into the performance, but having her friends in the audience calmed them, and “the warmth of the crowd made it easy. I would one hundred percent perform here again, it was very lovely,” she said.
The basement was filled with chatter, laughter and dancing as everyone supported the performers. The standing space began to fill up as nearly every seat in the house was taken.
“We have a really great audience each time because people just want a nice safe show to be at,” Higgins said.
Higgins is looking forward to SALT’s upcoming show on Friday, Nov. 8.
“We are teaming up with UMass dissenters’ STEM Caucus, they are doing a show for Palestinian relief and all of the donations go to the Palestinian children relief fund,” Higgins said.
Amalie Harper can be reached at [email protected]
