A small, imaginary device rests in the back of your mind, right above the Sopranos-appreciation lobe, near the anxious rock and roll nerves. Let's call it the Swear-o-meter.

When the Headstones' Hugh Dillon calls the other day to hype his show at the Shaw Conference Centre tonight, mine burns out in less than five seconds. Ping - smoke out the ears. Manic Dillon is a curse-word Mechagodzilla and he calls me about the worst thing imaginable when asked if, you know, we're our own worst enemies when it comes down to it.

"Fish, you (worst word imaginable). That's a (second-worst word imaginable)ing good question, you (worst word imaginable again). I'm going to steal it and pretend I thought of it, what do you think of that?"

I think he may as well do what he wants, he does all the time, anyway. It would be pretty fair to call Dillon a major brat, but with the mandatory caveat that he makes sure everyone's having a blast while he's getting his way. If you've seen the Headstones rock, and what good Canadian hasn't, at least on TV, you know the energy, bad language and spitting involved. Not to mention the theme of survival - and the stupidity that requires its mechanisms.

This is Satan's season and the show is a Halloween howler (with Wide Mouth Mason and Big Sugar also on the bill). We now journey back into Dillon's childhood, before his marriage, before Hard Core Logo, before his famous drug meltdowns. Picture a young Dillon, bag open, scouring the streets of Kingston, town of Queens U students, the yet-to-be-formed Tragically Hip and ex-convicts picking fights in the Heights.

"It was so great, like going out for free beer or free weed. You just don't appreciate it because everything's free all the time anyway. I got this lame-ass costume, one of those dumb ones when you're so little you don't realize what a tool you look like, just a paper plate mask. It was so lame, I'd like to go back in time and find the guy that designed it, grab him by the collar and slap the (stuffing) out of him."

With children coming up, Dillon grabs the wheel instead and talks about a painting he did for a sick kids charity run by Sloan's Andrew Scott (you can see it at soundslikeart.cjb.net).

"I used to work in a hospital for sick children," he explains. While it filled him with ongoing empathy, there was something else in that building. A creepy feeling that fits the season we're in. He loses the rock-star persona for a minute.

"It was such an ancient hospital, no one would go down into the basement alone. I was there five years. I'd be taking kids to the morgue; I'd also take them out the front door when they survived cancer. But sometimes they didn't make it, and sometimes they didn't like that. People used to hear voices, see things out of the corner of their eye.

"I worked nights all the time; some of the kids would have nightmares. It freaked you out, man. I'd get freaked out all the time. You could just feel something."

With death in the air, I ask him what he'd think of his bandmates pulling a Kurt Cobain on him and releasing B-sides posthumously.

"You know, quite honestly, I don't think I'd give a (whip). Who cares? People don't understand how fleeting this existence is and that's why I try to do as much as I can with this useless life. I can't believe these people who bitch constantly about everything; they seem to be begging for the end of their interminable suffering. Hey, I'll help you out. Boom. It'll be another experience for me to talk about! Yeah!"

But there was the matter of that worst enemies question back at the beginning. Dillon is quick about it. "Yes. For (gosh-darn) sure.

"Life's hard. Get a helmet."