Traste & Superstararna - Pengar
Since Wednesday is the more introspective and personal of days here, I have to post something Swedish. Still, don’t want to go the obvious route with Ebba Grön or De Lyckliga Kompisarna — for me, that would have been way too obvious anyway. Therefore it’s this one. You can hear a small embryo of what Traste would go on and do with Traste Lindéns Kvintett. And equally why Per Persson, then of Dead Scouts (Swedish Alt-country alreadin in 1984), would seem like a perfect fit to join the quintet. But this is before the folk rock outfits so this is the punk years.
And really, it’s great. Not as angry as the bands form the Stockholmian suburbs, Traste brought something else though — an air of irony, lyrics with both humour and bite and I wonder if he might not had been too smart for the whole punk movement in Sweden.
It’s the same thing with the London vs Leeds & Manchester style on punk in Britain. They’d seen factories close down, towns dry out and violence in the street. Riot? Are you fucking crazy?! Not again, that didn’t solve anything the last time, quite the opposite. Humour and brains and a passion for what they do as coping mechanism. It’s a bit founded in boredom but mostly it’s because there were no other choice.