Peter Bjorn and John Honing Their Comedic Skills

Posted on Sep 11th 2009 3:00PM by Benjy Eisen
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Now that Peter Bjorn and John have wrapped a highly-successful summer tour as the support act for Depeche Mode, the quirky band from Sweden is already thinking ahead to their next outing. They've scheduled a short jaunt with fellow Swedes El Perro Del Mar in November, but after that they're thinking about an unusual pairing. "We're talking about having comedians opening up for us," drummer John Eriksson tells Spinner. "We can, if we're lucky, say something funny. But I think it'd be a good idea to warm up the audience with some professional comedians. We have some favorite Swedish ones, but I don't think that's going to work in the US."

Probably not. We'd nominate Aziz Ansari but he told Spinner earlier this year that he was afraid of Peter Bjorn and John because they displayed violent tendencies backstage at Bonnaroo. He was joking, of course, and upon hearing this Eriksson agrees that it's pretty funny -- but there may be some truth in that after all. "We only beat each other up," says Eriksson. "Last night, Bjorn kicked me in the balls actually. It was as a joke, but it was a bit too hard. But we like comedians."

Peter Bjorn and John are quite capable of producing humorous banter themselves, both on stage and, apparently, in interviews. "Maybe that's why Depeche Mode likes us -- they thought we were, like, comedians," says Eriksson. "I'm going to work on my comedy routine even more ..."

Before going out on the road again, Eriksson confesses that he'd also like to work out the kinks in his tweets.
"We've been trying to Twitter this tour but we don't really know how to do it," he says. "I wrote a comment about our toilet being broken on the bus and someone told me you can't write that on Twitter."

Why not? That's easily 140 characters or less.