This coming Monday is the deadline for the Aimee Mann YouTube contest.

I don't really like contests all that much but sometimes I need a deadline just to get out of my recurring hebetude. If it was months away I probably wouldn't have entered, but I found out about the contest the week before I was leaving for Northern California and knowing that I only had five days to write and record the song was too much of a challenge to resist.

The contest was to make a video of yourself singing the song "Freeway" from Aimee's new album. I sat and listened to the song a couple of times and decided I would just let it swirl in my head for a while and see how it develops. Three days later, when I went into the CHAOS to record the track, it had evolved into a completely different song but with the Aimee's lyrics. Matt Lynott and Jane Lui joined me in the studio and with Christopher Hoffee behind the board we finished the track by evening.

That left one week to do the video while I was in Northern California. So I stuck a camera into my nephew, Scott's hands and we got to work. It took longer than I expected to film. But mostly because I was laughing so hard. We were blasting the track out of the car speakers at full volume but at half speed so I felt like I was in some bad, slow motion action sequence.

The results can be viewed here, in my first official YouTube video:

You can see the other contest entries here:

http://youtube.com/groups_videos?name=aimeemanncontest&page=1