Maybe you remember Andrew W.K. as the metal meathead whose bloody-nosed mug graced the cover of his debut I Get Wet.

Or the retro-rocker whose singular obsession with partying was evidenced in the anthems Party Hard, It's Time To Party, and Party Til You Puke.

Or the white jeans and T-shirt-clad charmer who once ate dog food during an appearance on MuchMusic.

Whatever the case, the Andrew W.K. at the Collective on Monday is probably not the one you remember. Not exactly, anyway.

For one thing, W.K. has recently become something of a regular on the lecture circuit, delivering "talks" on the concepts of "pure fun" and "total love," and the paradox that occurs when he consciously plans to not plan anything in advance.

At his School's Out Meltdown in Winnipeg, however, he's hoping to achieve a total state of party -- by performing a bit, chatting with whoever will talk to him, and taking part in a social experiment predicated entirely on the notion of, well, meeting people in bars.

But don't take our word for it. We caught up with Andrew, now 27, at his home in L.A. this week. Here's some of what he had to say.

SUN: The Andrew W.K of today may seem a far cry from the guy who was eating dog food on TV a few years back. How do you explain the recent transformation?

ANDREW: Looking at anyone's experiences as a timeline ... it can be interesting and a way to get insight into their development, but I think it is also helpful to look at things as constant and not travelling through time, past, present or future ... To me, eating dog food, for example, seems like a very short time ago, and there's nothing that's happened since then that would make me not eat dog food again. I wouldn't consider there to be some kind of mindset that I was in at that time that I'm no longer in.

SUN: How did you get started giving these "talks?"

ANDREW: The first one was at NYU ... Initially, I asked them what they wanted me to talk about, and I figured it would be about music and the music business. I had made one other lecture appearance like that before in Minnesota ... and I wasn't very interested in talking about the music business again. But they didn't want anything like that, actually. They said we want it to be whatever you want to do, it doesn't have to have any kind of structure or any kind of idea, and I was really excited about the freedom they were giving to me, and their excitement about that idea in particular.

SUN: So what do you talk about?

ANDREW: Existence and how to enjoy that phenomenon -- how to engage in it actively and find some sensation we could all agree to call happiness, or joy, or a good feeling. In that way I see it very much as an offshoot, a very natural extension of the music, whose intention has been to allow people to focus on that feeling.

SUN: The party tour would seem to be a natural extension of that search, given that a party, by definition, is an event where people can seek out that phenomenon together.

ANDREW: The idea to have parties was almost based on the parties and the hanging out I'd do while on a musical tour ... I'd have all these opportunities to meet the people who'd come to the show ... We'd end up speaking and we'd end up talking together and we'd have these experiences together and a lot of fun coming from that interaction. And I thought that aspect of the day was just as rewarding and just as important and gave us an even more intense kind of connection as the concert itself.