In our on-going quest to recruit international stars to help people around the world learn English, today on English, baby! there is a lesson on the terms “a.k.a.” and “alter ego” with Nicholaus Arson, who, as guitar player, is one of the leading creative forces behind the gold-selling Swedish garage rock sensation, the Hives.

The Hives just finished a fourth month break, and starting next week will tour Sweden, Finland and Japan, so we figured now would be a good time to feature them on the site. I was thrilled that Nicholaus took my interview request–I remember listening to the Hives’ 2000 album, Vidi Vidi Vicious over and over in my car as a teenager. I got it out to refresh my memory before the interview and still remembered most of the words. Just before we got on the phone I was listening to the Hives’ most recent The Black and White Album and found myself literally dancing in my office. They’ve only gotten better. Here is the unedited text of my phone conversation with Nicholaus.

Jason: So you guys just took a break from playing shows. What were you doing?

Nicholaus: Oh, just having time off, pretty much. Not playing was the main plan, I think.

Jason: How do you relax when you take a few months off like that?

Nicholaus: Well, most of us go home. And I don’t know…Once you’re in a touring mode, you’re used to working at least some portion of the day or at least doing stuff that’s very band-related all the time. You come home and you have a hard time winding down like the first few weeks or so. You pretty much get up in the morning and you start playing instruments and stuff. You work on new stuff. But after a while you get into a more easy-going mode where you can sort of kick back and just do whatever.

Jason: Right on. So you guys weren’t working on new material or anything?

Nicholaus: We are every once in a while. I think we’re working more than we expected to be working, but it’s your hobby. It’s what you do. I suppose it’s a job as well, but it’s what I do when I want to have fun, you know?

Jason: I’ve heard you might have a new album this year. Is that true?

Nicholaus: Eh…maybe.

Jason: What’s your next album going to sound like?

Nicholaus: I have no idea yet, actually. We’ve worked on a bunch of songs, but we’re not in a state where we’ve decided what songs to go with yet or anything. We’re more bulking up for something.

Jason: So you guys are about to do five shows in Sweden and I feel like a lot of bands that aren’t from Sweden will only do one or two cities and I just wondered what you think they’re missing if you don’t do five shows in Sweden.

Nicholaus: There is the possibility of doing five shows in Sweden for most bands. But if you’re on tour…like, we go to Czech Republic, we pretty much only play Prague, you know? Or if it’s summer, we may do a festival here and there, but it’s pretty much what we’re used to doing. But for us it’s a thing where we used to tour Sweden a lot like in ’99 or 2000, we did tours of Sweden, so we played every bush in this country. For us it’s sort of like going back to places we haven’t played in a long time.

Jason: What’s the hidden gem? What’s the spot that people don’t usually go to but they might should?

Nicholaus: Well, up north is usually good and they’re not spoiled with shows at all, you know. So it’s great to go up north. I guess it’s like…I don’t know…Canada. Canada is usually good. Going up north is something that you may not want to miss out on.

Jason: Gotcha. I wanted to ask you about Randy Fitzsimmons, the songwriter for the Hives.

Nicholaus: No comment. That’s a touchy subject.

Jason: Oh, is it? I didn’t realize it was touchy…

Nicholaus: Touchy for some…for Randy, you know. We’ve sworn allegiance to him. He wants to remain anonymous.

Jason: Right. Definitely. But you collect his checks, right? You have like an alias of Randy so you can pick up his checks?

Nicholaus: Yeah.

Jason: And you guys also have a well-known song, “A.K.A. I.D.I.O.T.” and so I was just wondering if you could explain for our members who are learning English, what “a.k.a.” means?

Nicholaus: Also known as.

Jason: Yeah. Some people think that Randy might be an alter ego of a band member since he’s so hidden. Do you have an alter ego?

Nicholaus: Well, people usually think that we have alter egos because we’re sometimes very calm off-stage and then we’re, perhaps, energetic onstage. People usually think that it’s an alter ego. But it’s not really. You’re the same guy, but that’s how you move to music that you like, you know. We don’t use alter egos in the band, and Randy Fitzsimmons is not an alias for anybody in the band. I collect the money and then we split it six ways. He’s always been a part of the band, but he doesn’t tour and doesn’t show his face.

Jason: That’s so cool. That’s so unusual. One last thing. Can I ask you about Japan real quick?

Nicholaus: Yeah, Japan, yeah sure.

Jason: You’re about to play there and you’ve been there quite a few times. Is it different than playing other places? Is there something special about Japan?

Nicholaus: It is a bit different, actually. It’s a very controlled environment. People aren’t drunk at the shows or anything, but they go crazy. They might be drunk at the club afterwards, or they’re very well-behaved drunks or something. I don’t really know. It’s hard to tell. As soon as you stop playing a song, they’re quiet to listen to what you’re going to say. But as soon as you start playing a song, they go completely nuts.

Jason: Unlike…

Nicholaus: Unlike maybe England or Germany or Sweden. Any place where people drink a lot, you know. Then you’re sort of playing to a sounding amoeba. It’s just a pack of sweaty people forming into one, falling over and screaming and never being quiet. Which is sort of what we always get used to playing to. There is something weird about playing Japan.

Jason: Do you guys like that contrast, being able to play to a calmer audience or an audience that at least slows down when you slow down?

Nicholaus: Um, I don’t know. It’s sort of like trying to outrun your shadow, you know. There’s a freakiness to it that I’m not used to since I’m used to playing to the amoeba type crowd. But I think it’s a respect thing and I appreciate it. They want to show you respect by quieting down and listening to what you have to say.

Below is the full text from the interview I did with Hutch Harris from the Thermals for Monday’s English lesson. It was the second time I’ve interviewed a band for an English lesson, and this time, there wasn’t a specific topic for vocab (like drinking last time). So I did my best to reach the perspective on American culture and vocab terms that Hutch could offer and I think it went pretty well.

But first, the Thermals’ tour dates.

12.04.08 Chop Suey Seattle, WA
12.05.08 Doug Fir Portland, OR 21
12.06.08 Doug Fir Portland, OR All Ages, early show
12.12.08 Primavera Club, Barcelona, ES
12.13.08 Primavera Club, Madrid, ES
12.14.08 KCLSU, London, UK
12.17.08 Ekko, Utrecht, NL
12.18.08 Vera, Gronigen, NL

Jason: Since your last album [The Body, the Blood, the Machine] was, in some ways, a comment on American politics and society, I just wanted to ask you about how you feel about Obama’s victory and if it’s affected your world view.

Hutch: Dude, I’m stoked. I’m so stoked. I was scared until the last minute, really. I didn’t even have a drink. I wasn’t going to get drunk at some Obama party and have it turned around and have McCain steal it or something. As soon as he took Ohio though, it really seemed like was gonna happen.

So yeah, it totally changes my world view because choosing Obama wasn’t choosing the lesser of two evils. It wasn’t like if we would have gotten John Kerry. And it would be quite different if we had McCain and Palin going in there right now. Everyone knows that. Not just did we get a great president, we also dodged a bullet with those other two. And the whole world was rooting for Obama. So obviously the world is going to be very different and it looks to be positive.

Jason: How do you think it affects the Christian/fascist state that you were imagining on your last album?

Hutch: The most disgusting thing right now are people who think that Obama is the antichrist. I mean this is serious. I hate even talking about it because it’s almost like we shouldn’t give these people any credibility at all. I don’t know. What’s wrong with people? Obama is a good Christian. People, I think are confused as to what the president actually does and what he has the power to do. Yeah, I don’t know what to say about the nuts. I try to think about that less. I turned myself off on thinking about religion and being wrapped up in it after that last record. But obviously you can’t. I just try not to obsess about it and let it get me down like it used to.

Jason: Totally. For a lot of our members, I’m guessing that “punk” and “garage rock” are going to be relatively new terms. So your first couple of albums were described as low-fi and more recently there’s been a lot of talk of the Thermals pop sensibilities and I wondered how your sound has evolved and what we can expect on the next record.

Hutch: It’s just what you said. It’s pop sensibilities for sure. I think as pop songs, these songs are written the best of all our songs. I think the structures are really solid. They’re really catchy. I’m really proud of the lyrics because again I feel like the lyrics have some gravity to them, but at the same time, they work really well on the surface, if you’re just thinking about it as a pop song or something you can sing along too. There is another layer without being too pretentious about it.

Jason: Do you think “lo-fi” was a term that applied to you at a point in time?

Hutch: We called it “no-fi” for the first record because the first record, you know, was just on cassette. “Lo-fi” would have been an over statement for that record. But we’ve been going through a natural progression since then where we don’t take huge leaps in fidelity, but we try to make each record sound better than the last one. For us to just put out records on a four-track cassette would just be ridiculous.

Jason: So you do a lot of touring internationally, and I wonder, what’s your favorite country to play in?

Hutch: I kind of think it’s got to be Germany. Even before we were getting successful here and in the UK and other countries, Germany and the Netherlands jumped on it right away and we had some of the most exciting shows in Germany. If we’re talking about all countries, it has to be the US. The best shows of our lives have been mostly in the US, either in Portland or Seattle or New York. But we have fun shows everywhere. It’s hard to pick one. We love touring Europe. Touring Europe is a lot more fun than touring the US. You’re treated much better. Hospitality…no matter what your level, you’re just cared for a lot more. And a lot of times it’s easier because the countries are so much smaller, the drives are a lot shorter. I mean in the west [of the US], driving like 9 hours a day with a show every day? That’s crazy.  We just did only UK shows for two weeks. It was beautiful, it was like two hour drives every day. But touring the UK is much more like touring the US. I’m talking about mainland Europe when I’m talking about them feeding you and putting you up, etc.

Jason: Have you picked up any German from your shows there?

Hutch: I know a little bit. I know some short words. It’s a really intense language. I was actually to a German band one time…Because most German bands we play with, they’re all singing in English. And of course they speak English. Their English is better than ours. It’s more grammatically correct. They say “months” instead of “munts.” They say “second” instead of “sekind.” But anyway, I was talking a German man and he was saying that the English language, the thing is you have so many more words to choose from than in German that you can be way more expressive.

Jason: And then the last thing I wanted to ask you, since I think it will be a new word for a lot of our members, is what are thermals and how did you pick that as your band name?

Hutch: The real definition of a thermal is hot air. Like if you’re hang gliding…or birds, will ride a thermal. That’s not why we picked it. But it’s associated with heat, so you say thermal underwear or long Johns. Which to me, that style, people wearing their thermals to rock shows, that’s a really Northwest thing. And we were totally into flannel when Nirvana was big. You’d have black cut off shorts and wear your thermals underneath with boots or whatever. That wasn’t me. I’m thinking more of girls, actually, but it was something I always thought was really cute. So we’re named after underwear. But it works to say that it’s just a lot of hot air.