Traste & Superstararna

Biography

Swedish provinces in the late seventies offered limited options for the young and restless. In and around small town Bollnäs, most teenagers were content just drinking and driving tractors, or playing the odd winter sport bandy. Or just hanging around waiting for something like computer games, cell phones and MTV to happen. Others felt they had no choice but to play the new rock´n´roll-music at high speed. And to start a band with a silly name. This oddball bunch of childhood friends called the...

Swedish provinces in the late seventies offered limited options for the young and restless.
In and around small town Bollnäs, most teenagers were content just drinking and driving tractors, or playing the odd winter sport bandy. Or just hanging around waiting for something like computer games, cell phones and MTV to happen. Others felt they had no choice but to play the new rock´n´roll-music at high speed. And to start a band with a silly name.

This oddball bunch of childhood friends called themselves Traste & Superstararna (Trush & the Superstarlings.) Nobody understood why.
They learned to master their sound playing weird, up tempo versions of Beatles songs. Only their parents smiled.
But when punk finally arrived, it was just the kind of fuel the group needed to get out of their wooden shoes and asskick a frantic mix where Jonathan Richman meets The Undertones on Eddie Cochrans porch.

The minute the minor hitsingle “Pengar” (Money) hit the streets, they where dubbed hometown heroes. During four furious years TSS travelled the middle region of Sweden collecting a trail of devoted fans.
When evening paper-guru Mats Olsson (John Peel-status here) baptised “Pengar” (a spiteful attack on rich mans-attitudes) as “Best homemade single of the year-1978”, it looked like the boys just could make it big.
But maybe the nation wasn’t ready for digesting “fast pop” (as they insisted on calling their music) at a larger scale and in 1983 the band broke up.

Popangelov, the one and only song in English were the group pay tribute to a slalom skiing racer who never won anything really, but was the most stylish and swinging of them all anyway.
Just like Trush and the Superstarlings…

From the ashes of TSS lifted Traste Lindéns Kvintett, during the 80´s one of the nation’s finest live acts with a large following, a band that fulfilled the promises of TSS.
Still working the scene is Ulf Stureson – guitar driven engine in TSS, bass player in TLK and tunesmith in both, who this year release his forth solo album.
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