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Summer 2008!
Who IS the President of Pop?
(of all time...)
John Lennon? Super Junior (슈퍼주니어)? Elvis Presley?
Dr. Dre?
Austin Washington? Mick Jagger?
The Beatles? Britney Spears? Michael Jackson?
Louis Armsrong?!?
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There's a radically different and infinitely cool version of this site coming in about two weeks or so.
Ignore this, for now! Please...
Please stay in touch here, and I'll try to let you know when that long awaited COOL version of
PopMusic.com is up and flying!
Love,
Austin W!
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Someone from Rolling Stone called me the "President of Pop" once, as I'm descended from George Washington, and I had my music on PopMusic.com! I've been a student at Oxford University now for several years, and this website was totally neglected. However, it's summer, and I'm almost finished, and I just noticed that EVERY day THOUSANDS of people around the world think - "hmmm....what would happen if I typed "Pop Music", or "PopMusic"....or "PopMusic.com"...into my web browser! (Stats show this - and people wanting to keep in touch here and get free music demonstrate it further!) This accounts for the fact that millions and millions of people around the world now know my music (I get letters from around the world!), even though it's only been broadcast a lot - weirdly enough - in the Middle East (go figure!). Anyway, the collection of videos above are from people who might (also!) be considered the President of Pop - I'm just wondering what the visitors to PopMusic.com think. Who do YOU think is the President of Pop? I hope me! But I put myself up against Elvis and Michael Jackson, The Beatles and Britney Spears, and even 슈퍼주니어! So, we'll see.... ;-) Who and what should the President(s) of Pop be? Cute Korean boys with perfect teeth and inordinate amounts of hair gel (슈퍼주니어)? Working class Englishmen who take too many drugs but still, however narcissistically and with however much unreasonable optimism, try to change the world (John Lennon)? Hip-swinging southern hicks who combine hee-haw and the blues (Elvis Presley)? The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, Britney Spears... The real reason most of those videos were picked, however, is that they are cool, in some way or other. I get chills when I look at most of them. Britney Spears, in that single long unedited long shot (it's not the original video, you should check it out!), is so clearly an iconic star about to happen. It's so weird that when it was made, no one knew her but her mother. That's Elvis' first ever appearance on television. The Monkees/Beatles thing is just cool... Jim Morrison is not the drunk frat boy type portrayed in Oliver Stone's movie - he's sensitive, clearly (I would suspect) stoned out of his mind, yet straight from the pages of some teen magazine (things that I guess went together in the 1960s), and when he sits at the front of the stage mid-way through that video, lost in his own spiritual and drug inspired ecstasy, rolling up that microphone cable, I find it equally as entrancing as Mick Jagger's histrionics, though in the opposite way. One is introverted, the other extroverted - yet both compelling, and clearly qualified to be - at least (!) ;-) - the Vice President of Pop!
The 1960s were thought to end at Altamont by some, but I think that's a very ethnocentric view, by Americans. Here we have Sympathy for the Devil, from that same summer (1969), in England - yet it is clearly a magical, beautiful, Sunday in the park. No Hell's Angels with knives (Altamont) (even though there are Hell's Angels there, the British variety, seen inanely and comically dancing at an earlier part in the film, skinny rather than fat like their American counterparts, and pretty obviously only a threat to themselves, should they trip as they boogie). No rolling around in the mud (Woodstock - yech!) The contrast I see all around, with all due respect, is between the violent and extreme Americans and their more civilised European counterparts. Have a better explanation? Same song (Sympathy for the Devil), same group (The Rolling Stones), same summer (1969)- on the one hand, a beautiful sunny Sunday in the park (Hyde Park, London), with even Paul McCartney in the audience lolling about in the sun, a day that's clearly magic. On the other, the violence and ugliness of Altamont, in the shadow of the hedonistic excesses of Woodstock. I think the Michael Jackson performance of Man in the Mirror at the Grammys in 1988 is as good as it is possible to be in a live performance of a song. You can only be different, never better. As good, sure. But better? Impossible. It's just cool to see Louis Armstrong sing that classic song What a Wonderful World. I heard once he was stoned out of his mind whenever he sang. Maybe. I also thought he was fatter. More important - doesn't he look angry as all hell, as he almost grimaces rather than smiles? Perhaps that's just the way he looked when he was "getting into" the music. Who knows? It's easy to imagine, though, taking the social context into account, that he looks like he'd like to kill - perhaps white society as whole- as he's singing words that imply the opposite. I've never seen him speak, so perhaps he was a gentle and kind man, but if you think about the society he lived in, with legal segregation and all that...I dunno...it's at least interesting to see what he looks like when he sings, and if the rest is just my imagination, it could be true, and surely was true for many people at that time. Finally, the Dr. Dre Snoop Dogg thing - both those guys are so unbelievably influential - Dr. Dre, especially, as a producer, too - that to omit them would border on sinful...
Austin Washington Summer 2008 PS You can check my newest music out, further down on this very page! How cool is that?!? (Well, vote - at the top of the page! - and let me know!) Thanks and cheers... |
Sign up here to get the 8 song Super-EP Ordinary Songs FREE Girls will come There was a dream Cuz girls are not like us There was a dream that Cuz girls are not like us There was a time when There once was a dream that Cuz girls are not like us Cuz maybe this song is wrong www dot pop music (pop!) dot com! :)
All 8 Ordinary Songs released FREE when it's been rainy long enough to finish the 8th! Telling me you think these ones are cool well help, too, either by contributing to charity, or just letting me know! Sign up here to have this - and much more - music sent to you free! Girls My Come was inspired by Vernon Bogdanor, a professor at Brasenose College, Oxford, who once said to my (then) girlfriend "Girls are like a bus - there's always another one coming along..." This was around the time he seemed to be taking an inordinate interest - surely academic ;) - in my girlfriend, and her friend - he never asked any of his boy students, as far as I know, for drinks. This inspired what I still think of as a not half-bad bon mot, delivered by SMS text message from me - as they were going to his place for drinks: "Don't snog the Bog!"
I've always found something really interesting. I read once that when Ringo Starr, of The Beatles, had the inspiration in the middle of the night to write a song called Back off Boogaloo, he groped around for a tape recorder, but it was out of batteries. Wouldn't you think - that if you were Ringo Star - a Beatle - you'd have, like, a guy who made sure your batteries never ran out? Similarly, I read once that when The Beatles were making Sgt. Pepper, Paul McCartney made believe he was actually in a band called Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band. Isn't that the weirdest thing? Like, how many people probably when they are playing in their band, or whatever, fantasize, make believe, they are in The Beatles or something. Yet Paul McCartney, making what I think is a crap album, but lots of people think is the greatest album of all time, is making believe he's in another band! One that doesn't even exist! I say that because, when I was writing this song, Girls May Come, I was making believe I was a staff song-writer in the mid 1960s. I don't know why, it just occurred to me. Like I had a job, and an office (that sort of thing existed from the late 1800s through the 1960s, I think - think The Brill Building- I believe in Nashville they still do that, though they don't have offices, I don't believe, but they do go, each day, like a job, and write songs. Don't wait for inspiration!) Anyway, that's what I was making believe when I wrote this song. That I was a staff song-writer in the mid-1960s or something. When I tried to describe Girls May Come to someone at the time, I said it was like a pop song from an alternate universe in the 1930s...sometime in that era, at least, when people wrote songs they way the make pizzas...cuz someone ordered one... |
Sign up here to get the 8 song Super-EP Ordinary Songs FREE Yeah Rachael Rachael's in the (yeah) Cuz when i'm looking out my window Huh... There once was a girl Ooh, oo oo ooh Cuz when I'm looking out my window (the sound of the mist sliding off into the dusk...) www dot pop music (pop!) dot com...
All 8 Ordinary Songs released FREE when it's been rainy long enough to finish the 8th! Telling me you think these ones are cool well help, too, either by contributing to charity, or just letting me know! Sign up here to have this - and much more - music sent to you free! See the movie above for the story of Rachael!
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Sign up here to get the 8 song Super-EP Ordinary Songs FREE I really really want to take you, I really really want to take you, I really really want to take you high...yeah... I had a melody that was running through my head, The song is dead, (Just an ordinary, just an ordinar-y eeh eeh song) Just an ordinary song I thought I had a love, yeah, Just an ordinary song Baby, I thought I had a song that came right from the soul of God;
oh yeah
Just an ordinary love etc... www dot pop music(pop!) dot com!
All 8 Ordinary Songs released FREE when it's been rainy long enough to finish the 8th! Telling me you think these ones are cool well help, too, either by contributing to charity, or just letting me know! Sign up here to have this - and much more - music sent to you free! This song, (Just an) Ordinary Song, started going 'round and 'round in my head one day, and didn't stop for ages. I was at Oxford at the time, had no access to any recording stuff - not even any instruments - so it was ages before I ever recorded it. I know the recording sounds spontaneous - and the recording of it was, when I was home for the holidays, once - but, my GOD, it was a lot of work to take all the bits of spontaneity recorded in a rush over a few days of holiday when my parents were out of the house - and turn it all into one coherent enhanced spontaneity™ ;-) whole. Think about movies - you get maybe a minute of usable footage from a twelve-hour day of shooting. Yet, strung together, a movie seems spontaneous. It flows. That's what making this song was like! Yeah, so it took ages to sound as spontaneous as it felt when it popped into my head one autumn day as I was wandering about under the Dreaming Spires, in love and happy, and yet, clearly subconsciously, realising that all things must pass away... There's some bit near the end, where the editing makes is sound like I'm singing "Please don't break my baby..." But I think it was my heart that was broken, in the end. (Not that there aren't new beginnings, after a while...!) I have a friend who saved 10 million dollars, after taxing and insane spending, by writing pop songs. He once told me that every one of his hits was based on a single broken heart...he'd never quite got over. I think I'd take the new beginnings over a perpetually broken heart and ten million dollars, to be honest.. Which might be a good time to remind you that I've never really made much of a penny by writing songs...so any and all contributions gratefully received! Thanx! (There's a contribution link on the bottom of AustinWashington.com - the Paypal one - 20% goes to charity, the rest supports my efforts! Which are somewhat charitable often, anyway... ;) You can also contribute directly to charity, there, which makes me feel good, too - Thanx..!)
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Here's
a link to some new videos, btw.
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Get Free Music and the right to VOTE - here!
Videos of all the candidates coming soon....stay in touch!
Your music really made me think.
I've been in some trouble, and haven't been able to decide what to do.
After listening to Falling Out of Time it clicked.
I know what to do!
Thank you so much!
It changes people's lives, and rocks out, too!
Hi, this is Austin. I write so many songs, I can't count them. Once, I wrote 88 songs in 88 days - but, as it would be abnormal to be that consistent, sometimes it was 3 a day - as I missed a few days! Since about last November, I've been sending song after song to my friends - never finished ones (not finished recordings...) Cuz, with a computer, it's easy to take an idea, and make it sound decent - kinda like a song. But I never seem to finish them. Well, summer's coming (actually, where I am, the first real summer weather was...yesterday! :-) I'm not really sure what I'll be doing for the next while, but probably not sitting around making music when the sun is out, as that's really an indoor activity. Y'know, I'm gonna spend some time at the beach! I have this obsession - well, not an obsession! - but my favourite number is 8. Do most people have a favourite number? Is that weird? Anyway, actually finishing 8 songs is much much much much much harder than writing 88. Take Rachael, as an example. I came up with the idea for it, made all the music through the guitar solo, and sang it - all the instruments, too - I did this in about 20 minutes. Well, that's what I remember! ;-) Maybe a few hours - but, all at once. There is the idea of inspiration. Sometimes you're just inspired. It took me months to get around to doing the second verse, and doing it probably took days. Then to add all the instruments that make the second half different from the first - weeks and weeks. It's weird. Think Brian Wilson! :-0 Anyway, as of this writing, I've got 7 songs finished, and the 8th...God, it's close! Every time I try, I get half-way to finishing it. Then, half-way again. As I recall from a joke book I read in 1st grade, at that rate it will take...infinity...! I'm gonna try and finish it, and put all 8 songs out by the end of ...June? The end of summer? ...of life? ...of eternity? We'll see! It depends on the sun and the warmth of the water, to be honest. And you. If people let me know they think this stuff is cool, by contributing to the charity on the charity page - or just telling me - I will finish the 8th song in about a day and a half, and put them all out for the world to enjoy... Anyway, all the songs are inspired - yet amazing amounts of effort have been put into making the finished songs feel as spontaneous as the original inspiration. Some are tongue-in-cheek - Girls May Come, for example - some are....well, each one is different, which is why it was hard to pick 3 for a sample... For the first month, 100% of any money given will go to charity - after that, 20%. Love,
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Here are some samples from the FREE 8-song Super EP -
Ordinary Songs
more info on the charity thing here!
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"Pop music is no longer pop music" - Zen Thought for the Day...
See below for why....
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Also...
Here are three songs from the 8-Song Super EP, Ordinary Songs,
to be released when it's been rainy long enough to finish the 8th song!
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Sign up FREE to get the songs when they're released, here!
These are just 3 of the 8 songs on the Super-8-Song EP,
Ordinary Songs,
Released free when it's been rainy long enough for him to finish the 8th song!
Sign up FREE to get the songs when they're released, here!
Let him know your thoughts - this really does make a difference!
How does Austin W! Stack up Against His Competitors?
Let's take an objective look, shall we?
Other Pop Stars |
Austin W! |
| Want your money | Wants your happiness |
| Want to be famous | Values his privacy |
| Egocentric bastards | Ditto (well, Austin is not shy, precisely ) |
I set up a MySpace profile two years ago, and never looked at it again -
Just found out that in tha time, 10,000 people listened to my songs!
Cool...
I don't know where to put these links, exactly - how about here?!?
Here's the prior version of this page
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Get Free Stuff, and Cool Stuff
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Contact Info for Business Reasons ONLY:
FAX: + 1 - Seven Seven Three - Eight Two Nine - Nine Zero Four Four
("+" means 00 for most of the world, in the US, just ignore the +)
You can also try the form here, but LOTS of emails come to me, and it might be missed!
Thanx!