UPDATE: the September contest is over, and Holding Back finished at #5 out over 550 entries, which should hopefully put me in serious contention for that opening act slot. Mission accomplished! Thanks again for your help.

Mongol General: Conan! What is best in life? Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women.

As a rule I don't enter song contests or "battle of the bands" anymore, because 1) most of them are outright scams, and 2) I don't like begging people to vote for me. You and I, we have better things to do.

So it's with some squirming trepidation that I refer you to Ourstage.com and my song, Holding Back, which at the time of this writing is #3 out of over 500 entries.

Why am I telling you this? Here's why:

I don't really care about winning the contest. All I care about is keeping Holding Back in the Top 10 or so.

Why? Because I'm in the running for a chance to open for Matt Nathanson when he comes to Seattle in November. They're basically going to look at the top ranked singer-songwriters and pick the most suitable artist for the gig. Being the only Seattle-based guy in the Top 20, I think I have a really good chance.

So yeah, I'm asking for your help. The catch is, Ourstage is righteously, outrageously fair and doesn't allow mob rule. You can't just vote for my song and then skedaddle away. Instead, Ourstage will randomly serve you two songs, and you "judge" the best of the two.

Lucky for you, it's the quarterfinals! Which means there are only 20 songs to vote for. So the chances of Holding Back popping up for you are very very high. But even if it doesn't, it's important that you still judge fairly, the idea being that Democracy In Action will float the best songs to the top.

So here's what you do. Go here, sign up, then go here and start judging songs. It's actually kind of addicting (I've done it a bit myself). If you see Holding Back, vote it up, yay! If not, just keep judging until you're bored, hungry or your boss comes wandering by.

Or, don't.

Thanks.