Hilary Duff: She's So There

Hilary Duff: She's So There

TV, movies, music -- Hilary Duff's so there: Aidin Vaziri | The list of things you can't talk about with Hilary Duff is exhausting. There will be no questions, please, about her tangles with Lindsay Lohan, Avril Lavigne, Aaron Carter, Paris Hilton, Frankie Muniz or any number of other touchy people that have come into her orbit over the past few years. But calling from a tour stop in Boise, Idaho, the teen star is so accommodating in every other way that it's easy to forget that her face has become such a fixture in the pages of Us Weekly. She seems, well, real. She makes fun of Britney Spears' recent barefoot exploits in public bathrooms. "You know what I think of when I go into a public bathroom at a gas station?" Duff says. "How your shoes kind of, like, stick to the ground." She gags at the mention of her backstage surroundings: "Some venues are nicer than others, but most of these places are beat up." She talks about her first crush -- Jonathan Taylor Thomas. "My sister and I were going through a box of pictures when we were in Houston and she had taken a picture of me next to a poster of -- we called him JTT -- and I was posing exactly how he was posing," she howls. "I destroyed it!"

Pop Quiz: Phil Collins

Pop Quiz: Phil Collins

Aidin Vaziri | Just a little reminder that even though Phil Collins is calling his first tour in six years the "First Final Farewell Tour" and that the former Genesis drummer insists he's never again going to travel around the world playing his songs, we're pretty sure he's totally lying -- because he told us all the same things six years ago when he was diagnosed with a hearing problem. But it seems like a good excuse, anyway, to plug his latest hits collection, "Love Songs."



Phil Collins
Q: Is this some kind of joke?
A: This will be the last time I'm coming through on a tour. That much is true. I've just finished Europe for the last time. I'm playing America for the last time. And in a year or so, I'll be doing South America and the Far East for the last time.
Q: Is this going to be the last time like you said six years ago it was going to be the last time?
A: I didn't say that last time.
Q: Yes you did. You said your hearing was shot and that you were going to play only acoustic shows for Toyota dealers from now on.
A: I did not say that.
Q: Yes you did, shortly after announcing that you were full of crap.

Pop Quiz: Robert Smith of The Cure

Pop Quiz: Robert Smith of The Cure

Aidin Vaziri | Never mind that the Cure announced its retirement four years ago. The influential British band is back with a new self-titled album and the traveling Curiosa Festival, featuring a lineup that includes young disciples such as the Rapture, Interpol, Mogwai, Cooper Temple Clause and Auf Der Maur. It's just like Ozzfest for people who wear their hair like birds' nests and write bad poetry.



Robert Smith of The Cure
Q: Are you enforcing any kind of all-black dress code?
A: No. I think every band on this bill is really cool in its own way. They all look totally different and they all act totally different. To me, what you do makes you cool. You either have passion or you don't, and that's it. There's nothing else.
Q: So the dress code is more of a self-imposed thing?
A: I like looking a certain way. I'm stuck with who I am, as is everybody else. There's no need to reinvent myself, although I have been wearing a lot of gray on this tour.
Q: Whoa, take it easy. Before you know it you'll be in bare feet and tie- dyed shirts, playing the cowbell like the guys in the Rapture.
A: That's one of the highlights of the evening. It's awesome. The essence of it, the secret to a happy life, is not caring what other people think.
Q: Yes, but as far as I know there are no Cure songs with cowbells.

Pamela Anderson, Author.

Pamela Anderson, Author.

Pamela Anderson, author. The actress' novel is not about her -- so she says.: Aidin Vaziri | Some of it is hopelessly transparent. The shapely bombshell in the book is discovered on the Jumbotron at a Miami Dolphins game, poses for Mann magazine and gets her big break on a television show called "Lifeguards Inc." The shapely bombshell in real life got discovered on the Jumbotron at a British Columbia Lions game, posed for Playboy magazine and got her break on a television show called "Baywatch." But considering the genuine Anderson, whose most recent boyfriend was rocker Kid Rock, had genuine relationships with the Sunset Strip bottom- feeders like Tommy Lee, Poison singer Bret Michaels and former "Happy Days" star Scott Baio, it's easy to see why she didn't want to use any real names in print. No one in their right mind would want to immortalize sharing a bed with Chachi. "I think this is even more revealing than writing a real biography because this way people get to know my personality better," she says.

The Corrs Live: Vegas at the Warfield

The Corrs Live: Vegas at the Warfield

Sexy Corrs prance, fiddle and wail to the walls in fevered show that brings Vegas to Warfield: Aidin Vaziri | Andrea was close enough to make the plastic seats in the Warfield tremble every time she opened her mouth.The rest of the band, meanwhile, packed so much fireworks and fanfare into Celt-pop hits such as "Forgiven, Not Forgotten" and "So Young" that each one felt like an entire Las Vegas show delivered in under 4 minutes. When the Corrs broke into their cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams," they wisely ditched the original track's gentle West Coast groove for a frenzied techno beat, funky wah-wah guitars and an insane bit of choreography that had Andrea whipping around her hair, lifting her skirt and standing on the edge of the stage with her arms wide open. Naturally, it was genius. And that's before she vigorously blew into the flute.

Pop Quiz Flashback: Rick James, January 6, 2002

Pop Quiz Flashback: Rick James, January 6, 2002

Aidin Vaziri | When "Street Songs" was originally released, Rick James had it all -- leather cat suits, a harem of groupies and the regal title King of Funk. Twenty years later, he looks back on a career sidetracked by a debilitating addiction and seedy lifestyle that landed him in Folsom State Prison in 1993 on assault, drug and imprisonment charges. With his breakthrough album -- which contains the hits "Give It to Me Baby" and "Super Freak" -- getting the reissue treatment this month, we tracked down James, 53, at his Los Angeles home (he was released from prison in 1996) to reflect on the past two turbulent decades. The funk singer passed away at 56 on Friday, August 6, 2004.



Rick James, January 6, 2002
Q: What would you say if you met that dude on the album cover now?
A: I would say, "Who the f-- are you, and what are you doing here? But I'm going to listen to you because you look outrageous."
Q: Would you try to give him advice and stuff?
A: I think I would try to find out what he knows. He's the one that's f-- smoking a joint on the corner. He's the one with Masai braids. He's the one with the prostitutes following him. He's the one on the cop's shoulders. He's the one who's ghetto fabulous.
Q: Do you have any regrets?
A: I think I would have got my cocaine from Colombia as opposed to on the street.

Pop Quiz: Tommy Stinson

Pop Quiz: Tommy Stinson

Aidin Vaziri | Tommy Stinson has gone through more bands than shades of hair color. Before even hitting puberty, the bassist started playing music alongside Paul Westerberg in the seminal college radio band the Replacements, released a couple of solo albums under various names and eventually joined up with the Frankenstein version of Axl Rose's Guns N' Roses six years ago. He plays on that band's long-awaited "Chinese Democracy," which has yet to get a release date. In the meantime, Stinson has recorded a solo release, "Village Gorilla Head."



Tommy Stinson
Q: Which do you want first: the questions about Guns N' Roses or the ones about the Replacements?
A: I didn't think you had any questions about those bands. I thought you were just interested in my solo career and wanted to talk to me because you like my new record.
Q: You have a new record?
A: Yeah.
Q: What's so great about it?
A: It embodies all that I am now. I made it out of my own pocket so I thought it would be fun to get as self-indulgent as I felt like.
Q: Nobody wants to hear about that.
A: As long as you don't ask me any Axl Rose questions, I'm cool.
Q: Why did Axl Rose hire a guitar player who wears a bucket of fried chicken on his head?

Eric Clapton Live: Redemption Songs

Eric Clapton Live: Redemption Songs

With Robert Johnson salute, Eric Clapton can be forgiven (almost): Aidin Vaziri | At the heart of the show was not the staggering 20-minute tear through "Got to Get Better in a Little While" -- although that was a close second -- but the concert-within-a-concert in which Clapton turned the lights down low and pulled out a chair to run through five wild-eyed covers, including "They're Red Hot" and "If I Had Possession Over Judgment Day," songs composed in 1936 by Delta blues king Robert Johnson, who quite convincingly sold his soul to the devil before he passed away. For a moment, it was easy to forgive him for that guest spot on Lionel Richie's "Dancing on the Ceiling." But not the Michelob commercial.

Pop Quiz: The Hives

Pop Quiz: The Hives

Aidin Vaziri | OK, so the Hives can get a little monotonous with the whole black- and-white dress code and songs that sound as if they were recorded in a cave, but that's only until you see them live. With front man Howlin' Pelle Almqvist strutting around like Mick Jagger with a chicken stuck up his butt and everyone else going pretty much 100 percent ballistic, it's not so much a regular gig as total rock 'n' roll pandemonium.



Howlin' Pelle Almqvist of The Hives
Q: You guys also handle your own business affairs. Is that as time consuming as the rolling around on the floor?
A: It is, actually. The more popular you get, the less you get to play music, which is kind of annoying because we do this to play music.
Q: Plus you need all that time to take drugs and sleep with groupies.
A: Ah, we can fit it in.