For the first time, fans can stream the music of influential indie rock group Salem 66
The new availability of Salem 66's music — four albums, an EP, and two singles released between 1984-90 — marks the resurfacing of a group that was part of a vibrant Boston indie-music landscape in the '80s. The scene yielded breakout acts like the Del Fuegos,
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'It was this really, really creative and exciting time,' Kaplan says.
Salem 66 formed after mutual friends suggested that Grunwald and Kaplan connect. Each had previously played in other bands: Grunwald fronted the Maps on their 1979 single 'I'm Talking to You,' while Kaplan was in the Insteps with friends from high school. They were between projects in 1981 when Kaplan came by the house Grunwald shared with musicians from other Boston bands.
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'We sat there just looking at each other's lyrics in my bedroom on the floor,' Grunwald says. 'You can tell if you like somebody's writing or not.'
With Susan Merriam on drums initially, the trio was soon playing gigs and recording songs for their first EP, a six-song, self-titled 1984 release built around hooky melodies, coupled with punchy, angular guitars and the contrasting sound of Grunwald's resonant voice and Kaplan's breathier vocals. Drawing as much on the writing of Emily Brontë and Norman Mailer as on the influence of English bands like the Slits and the Raincoats and Ultravox, Salem 66 quickly carved out a niche in the Boston scene.
'I hate to use the word 'quirky,' but what the heck,' Grunwald says, laughing.
Though there was a strong sense of camaraderie among the musicians on the scene, Salem 66 was not immune to casual sexism. Grunwald and Kaplan recall bouncers not letting them into the dressing rooms backstage at clubs, or music-store clerks asking if they were buying guitar strings for their boyfriends. They even changed how they dressed onstage, opting for jeans and T-shirts instead of the vintage clothing they favored at first.
'We were three girls, none of us were that great on our instruments, and we were writing songs,' Kaplan says. 'We were very new and very raw, and kind of noisy. I think that's not what people expected, that they wanted to hear something prettier.'
Raw and noisy was exactly what
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'I loved the way they played off each other,' Donelly says. 'I loved their voices, I was just always really drawn to them. And so, when we got here and we played with them a few times, it was kind of thrilling.'
For Grunwald and Kaplan, the thrill was wearing off, and the band split following the release of the 1990 album 'Down the Primrose Path.' There was no blow-up, no undercurrent of ill-will among the members. It was simply time to move on.
'It's a tough life to sustain,' Grunwald says. 'Doing that for that many years without really the model changing that much, I just got to a point where I felt like I wanted to do something else.'
Grunwald enrolled at Harvard Extension School, got married (to Dave Minehan, of the Neighborhoods and other bands), and had kids. Kaplan finished a degree in history at UMass Amherst. She got married and worked as a university archivist before becoming a yoga instructor. She moved to Providence a little more than a year ago.
Though Kaplan has begun playing out again for the first time in decades, appearing with Chris Brokaw earlier in May in Jamaica Plain, she and Grunwald say the idea of a Salem 66 reunion is more flattering than practical, despite the occasional offer to play festival gigs.
'It's been so long since I've been in a band, it didn't really feel like it fit into where I am,' says Grunwald, who lives in Essex.
All the same, the positive reaction to news of their music becoming accessible again has been gratifying for both.
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'In all these years, I was thinking that there was such an incredibly small number of people who actually noticed, or that I knew them all,' Kaplan says. 'It's been really nice, I think for both of us, to hear from people saying that they loved our band.'
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