BIOGRAPHY#2 [go to autobiography]

Most mere mortals, it seems, aspire to be pop stars. Well, a lot do, at least.

Austin Washington - or, the Magnificent, Marvellous Austino, as his friends call him (actually, they don't) - is anything but mortal. Standing at over 11 feet tall, he was blessed at birth with a preternatural ability to shatter glass at the length of two football fields.

His tones are anything but mellifluous.

However, with modern studio trickery, his out-of-tune screeches and warbles have been transformed to almost sound human.

"Almost" is the key word, here, as no 11 foot tall, helium-filled (did we mention that? that's why we must keep him tethered to the ground, lest he float away) - luminescent (he was genetically modified with lightning bugs) boy can be said to be fully human.

His songs, though, speak for themselves...

(Spam free, remove yourself any time, used exclusively by Austin to give you music! :D)

austin's actual musical thoughts are here

"I don't want to make music - I'm compelled. Begged for a piano when 3 - read music before words -

"My ability to make music scares me sometimes...(more)

"I took a ride without using a plane
Some say I'm crazy others say I'm insane (more)

"The greatest song-writer in pop music history. Combining the word-play and wit of Cole Porter, the imagination of John Lennon, the depth of feeling of Kurt Cobain, harmonies better than any boy band, the skillz of Dr Dre, and the catchiness of a bad head cold, Austin Washington's songs capture the true depth and breadth of all that is good about Pop Music." (more)

My ability to make music scares me sometimes. Words - I'll get - I used to, like, in school, after having to learn a poem - I'd get a rhyming pattern stuck in my head, and write, literally, 15, 20, 30 pages - endlessly - with Dr. Seuss rock-solid meter, nonsense! I can write rhyming iambic pentameter couplets faster - really - than prose. I once wrote 75 or so Christmas cards that way - rhyming -

As for music (when I make songs, now, I often just make up the words as I sing - it's usually better that way - though there is some refinement, winnowing...)

But music itself - the song - In My Song - from my next LP (first full-length album! - mid 2010 - yeah!!!!) - I literally and seriously sat down and played it, from beginning to end, with most of the lyrics - never having heard, imagined, written, thought it - it didn't exist, I sat down and played it through, straight through - it scares me when I think about it. It scares me.

I know that people like Lennon/McCartney, Michael Jackson - all sorts of people - Tom Petty, I read in a book someplace - feel that songs come from some magical place - like, God or something.

I feel different, somewhat.

For one - almost every song - well, some come just when I'm dreamy - but a large number came when despondent. It worries me about being happy - will I ever write another? Well, I've got enough to last several lifetimes!

And - say, with In My Song - I feel - I know - I don't know - aaaugh!!! I was despondent, I sat down and played straight through a never-before-heard song - and when done - was at peace with myself and the universe.

So - I don't feel that songs come from a magical place - not at all - I feel I'm in a magical place - I once, literally, saw a golden light suffuse a room I was in - when the song Know No Fear came to me.

I don't write songs.

And songs don't come to me from elsewhere.

Magic happens - I feel better - and a song exists - that, apparently, seems to have that same effect on others.

I'll never forget someone who wrote this, back in the day:

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!

I'll be one of the first to buy your CD's!

Love and Cookies,"

- dimples

That makes it all worthwhile -

It's okay if they're stupid, or catchy, or fun, or anything else they might be - these songs have the power to change lives, as they've changed mine, and other people's lives, too. They're fun - they're cool - but they're magic, too - -

AW