Artist

Electric Banana Band

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Electric Banana Band was the band in the most popular children's show of all times in Sweden. But with extremely competent musicians, clever lyrics, and an intentionally silly jungle image, they managed to attain lasting popularity. For the TV they recorded many songs that were to become minor classics, and when the show's last season was over, they successfully reunited and toured several times.

In the mid-'70s, Lasse Åberg was asked to make a children's program for the national television. The result was Trazan Och Banarne, and the first seasons saw Åberg and Möllberg playing ukulele and singing. When a new season was to be recorded in 1981, Åberg gathered a band consisting of top session musicians, among them drummer Per Lindvall. The band was led by guitarist Janne Schaffer, seen by many as the most competent guitar player in Sweden, who had also written the theme for the first series of the show. Åberg and Möllberg were front figures, but the music maestro was Schaffer who wrote most of the songs. The rock & roll pastiches did very well with Åberg's lyrics, and when the motif was being young in the city, like in "Alf Lundin," the songs reached further than being just children's music. The first album was Electric Banana Band from 1981, containing a number of songs written by James Hollingworth, whom Åberg had previously co-operated with.

A second album, Livet i Regnskogarna, was released in 1984, but Electric Banana Band was never a full-time project. All the musicians pursued other careers on the side, and Åberg had big success as a maker of film comedies, the best-known being Sällskapsresan. In 1986 the last season of Trazan Och Banarne was shown and Electric Banana Band ceased to exist. In 1993 the compilation The Golden Years 1981-1986 was released, and the interest for Electric Banana Band was big enough to support a number of successful reunion tours, and the band even appeared at the Hultsfred Festival. Electric Banana Tajm from 1998 contained a mix of new and re-recorded songs, as did Nu E're Djur Igen from 2000. ~ Lars Lovén, Rovi

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