Email to a Friend

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

interview and review: Sepie
photos: Dakota Fine and Francis Chung (make sure you click on them to enlarge)
interludes: Svetlana

Peter Bjorn and John brought their (great, pop) show to DC this weekend and when Gibson Guitars asked us if we wanted to host a little afternoon of free (flying dog) beer, hanging out with Peter (Bjorn and John were coming to DC later that day from New York) and could invite 40 of our closest friends, readers and VIPERS (the extra privilege BYT society you should really join today), in their amazing Chinatown showroom, we said: “OF COURSE”. All caps.
I mean, first of all, look how amazing their space is? Do you not want to hang out there all the time?

After Peter arrived we sequestered him into one of the Gibson private rooms for a quick interview (our second with him, since we interviewed him before for his great solo records “The Last Tycoon”, making him our official favorite of the trio-ed) while the lucky contest winners and VIPERS drank some complimentary flying dog beer and touched up their lipglosses for the impending hand shaking and photo taking.

BYT: You guys have been to DC a number of times, what are some places that you find yourselves visiting? Are there any places that you’ve wanted to check out in DC and haven’t gotten chance to yet? Mainly because you get roped into these meet and greets and interview schedules?
Peter: Well, today for the first time I went down and saw Capitol Hill and the White House and all that stuff. I’ve never seen that before because we usually just come in and, you know, do the show; going straight away. So it was nice, we came late last evening and went out and had an Ethiopian dinner. It was nice.

BYT: I saw you guys last time you came to the 9:30 Club in May and you did a cover of Joy Division’s “Transmission”. You’ve also covered “Teenage Kicks” a few times. Was punk a big influence for you growing up?
Peter: Eh, yeah I mean just the energy and the excitement of that whole era late 70s and early 80s. And I guess especially our earlier records, the ones that aren’t that famous, our first two ones – kind of a new wave-ian, a bit of an Elvis Costello and The Jack thing goin’ on. Especially since we’re a trio, guitar-bass-drums, it’s kind of a basic thing to do and we just love doing that live. And so, maybe we can go back to the style again.

BYT: How do you determine what songs to cover?
Peter: Well, like the “Transmission” thing that’s actually pure, spur-of-the-moment thing. It’s nothing we ever discussed. I think we might have done it the first time in Dallas or something. Like some weird place. Now if it feels good, I just go into it and the guys do it. But it’s never planned. It just a couple of things like that; like maybe I will be doing some Curtis Mayfield and, you know, it’s just all over the place. Just ad-libbing at the end of “Up Against the Wall” because you can always just go into something there during the jam.

BYT: A good transition song then.
Peter: Yeah.

BYT: As far as musical influences go, are there any other particular styles that stand out?
Peter: Anything really. We all kind of have different backgrounds from when we were kids. John was heavily into heavy metal: Judas Priest, Van Halen, and all the 80s heavy metal things. And Bjorn was more into synth-pop growing up like Depeche and Howard Jones and whatever poppy 80s synth-pop. But I was a 60s fan so I was into The Beatles, The Byrds, The Beach Boys. But when we actually started a band, that was later of course, then you know you had shoegaze, the Manchester wave, the lo-fi’s, and the indie waves of the 90s.

BYT: You guys remixed “Australia” by the Shins…how did that happen?
Peter: Someone asked. And I don’t even know who asked.

BYT: A little history time…you and Bjorn met in high school?
Peter: Yeah.

BYT: You were in a couple bands together?
Peter: Yeah, we had a couple of bands. We had one band that did, you know like, Burt Bacharach songs.

BYT: How did the two of you meet John?
Peter: That was in Stockholm when we moved there in ’99. We had another band before called Pinky in the Middle which was like a pop band and we released an album in ’97, I think. You shouldn’t check that out.

BYT: I’ll make note of that.
Peter: We split that band up and continued to write songs and did demos but we couldn’t play drums so we had to have a drummer. Actually, you know, we put up signs in stores and stuff and we found John through mutual friends and started to hang out and he was perfect.

BYT: How do you determine who does the vocals on a particular song?
Peter: In the beginning I did everything because I’m the only real singer. On the second album, Bjorn did a couple of things. And for “Writer’s Block”, we just continued to try that out especially since John started to write songs on that album. So we just tried different voices, and sometimes it just suits the song better to have a less-equipped singer. And we also have really different voices. Bjorn has this dull, Ringo Starr thing and then John has like a childish-naive tone and I am somewhere in the middle – so it’s good.

BYT: If you were able to collaborate with any current artist or group, who would it be and why?
Peter: We recorded a song for “Living Things” but we never finished; which is actually a rap that I tried to rap but I was so bad at rapping we couldn’t use it. I had this is whole “find the right rapper” thing because we’d like to put that song out. But I don’t know what rapper.

BYT: Having had the opportunity to see you guys a few times, I have noticed that you typically do not play anything off of Seaside Rock. “Inland Empire” is a personal favorite PB&J song of mine. Any chance of that song making the set list tonight?
Peter: We’re actually going to perform an instrumental song today but not that one. We’re going to do another one because we’ve got local brass players and hopefully a flutist. And that’s the reason why we can’t play that album. The way we recorded it, we recorded basic backing tracks and I did some violin and Bjorn did saxophone and we played all these instruments that we couldn’t play. So when we perform that live, we have to bring in other people and we did one show in Stockholm performing the whole album with kids. From music school; like ten year olds, eleven year olds to play like saxophones and percussions to make it sound like a “school of rock”. It was really really fun. If we can bring in guests like we are going to do today, then I would like to do that more – it should be interesting.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

at which point we rescued Peter from the clutches of one fan and sent him into a photo booth with a couple of dozen other ones. look at all these happy faces and guitar abuse:

and then it was show time:

Having had a less than desirable spot last time the Swedish sensation made its way to the 9:30 Club, I made sure to stake out a decent place in the crowd this time by getting to the venue at a reasonable hour. Squeaking into the club with our BYT photographer Francis secured this sought out ambition as a successful one. After about an hour or so of shooting the shit with the neighboring PB&J fans and admiring the recent addition of red and white plastic beer cups, Sara and the rest of El Pero del Mar made their way on stage for a soulful set.

New to the DC-area, the openers graced us with some choice dance moves, sweet riffs, yearning vocals and great beats. Having the luxury of being front and center, the sound was great which seems to be a rare treat that the opening band got to benefit from. Once the band ran through their 8-song playlist, the stage had been set for their Swedish-counterparts to make way.

During the intermission, the now infamous PB&J backdrop was unraveled and the audience went absolutely bazonkers. Following this act of excitement, the headliners took the stage and opened with “Amsterdam”. The set sufficiently met my expectations and was just a “good” show in my books until the following three things occurred:

1. Peter stayed true to his word during our interview (see below) and he along with Bjorn and John whipped out some Seaside Rock shit with a kick-ass live rendition of “Needles and Pills” with Hat City Intuitive Horns. “Needles and Pills” is a song off of their instrumental album, which as its name implies, contains no lyrics. They rocked, they jammed, Bjorn was viscously shredding flat on his back, John was manning his drums like a bionic robot-man and Peter was jumping all over the god damn stage.
2. PB&J actually accepted a song request made by this girl in the front row to play “Paris 2004” – nice pick lady! This song marked the first of three of their three-song encore.
3. The light show was amazing – I nearly had a seizure!

If you didn’t make it out to the show this time, shame on you. Don’t be too hard on yourself though – these guys seem to like DC and 9:30 Club. This show having marked their second trip to the block in six months! I’m sure that they’ll be back sometime in the foreseeable future when their next album drops. Plus, if you ever wanted to meet these guys and have your PB&J memorabilia signed it would definitely be likely considering that they openly announced that they were headed to the back to chill after their last song. All-in-all a solid (gold) show; these guys are the TITS!

Oh yeah, here’s their set-list.

Set-list:

1. Amsterdam
2. Far Away, By My Side
3. Living Thing
4. I Want You!
5. It Don’t Move Me
6. Lay It Down
7. Just the Past
8. Young Folks
9. Nothing to Worry About
10. Needles and Pills
11. Paris 2004
12. Big Black Coffin
13. People They Know
14. Objects of My Affection

That’s all kids. For now. Craving more?
Previous coverages:
Tom Collier of Bellman Barker interviewed Peter Moren right before “The Last Tycoon” came out
Live show review #1
Live show review #2
Judging the cover by its “Living Thing” cover
Judging the cover by its “The Last Tycoon” cover

Pertinent websites:
http://www.peterbjornandjohn.com/
http://www.gibson.com/
http://www.flyingdogales.com/
+
Become a VIPER and make all your meet and greet and freebie dreams come true

Email to a Friend

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•