The Video Vault: Teen Crush Edition

I fell in love with Gavin Rossdale in 1996 when I was 14 years old. He was the first man I cried over, the first one to make me feel all fizzy and nervous inside even though I knew we would never meet. There's something intangible about your first crush - the innocence that is lost when you realize you would give anything just to see your own reflection in another person's eyes. And obviously make out with them... but that's a given. My love for Rossdale was so fiery, so uncontrollable, so wild, that I can still remember the moment I picked up a copy of Rolling Stone (pictured above) only to come home and paste it on my wall. He was staring at me - I was staring back at him. Almost perfect. The video below was taken during Bush's performance at Woodstock 99, and features a shirtless, wet, yelping Rossdale singing their (still) heartbreaking single 'Glycerine'. It makes me shiver with delight even after all these years.

Can You Dig It?

With last weekend's 40th Anniversary of Woodstock, and the release of the new Ang Lee flick Taking Woodstock on August 28th, I've had hippies on the brain. It's strange to think that after all this time Woodstock remains one of the most iconic moments of the past 50 years - whether you were there or not, the music, the images and the memory of Woodstock still touch everyone. The legendary Richie Havens was the first performer to take the stage, and he took on that challenge wholeheartedly. Many of the musicians that were set to perform before him were delayed by traffic, so Havens performed ahead of schedule, and continued to woo the crowd three hours into his set. Encore after encore Havens continued to play, encouraged by Woodstock organizers, and the crowd. Eventually Havens ran out of songs to play, so he improvised a tune based on the old spiritual 'Motherless Child'. The song eventually became 'Freedom', one of the most haunting and anthemic songs of that generation:

It's safe to say that my generation has yet to experience a unified movement of Woodstock's magnitude, but this past year we got pretty close. Here's hoping we'll be inspired enough by the past, to look bravely and optimistically into the future.