It was a great weekend for the music books, with so many good shows going on around town — and you can call us biased, but we really do think Friday's Imaginary Holiday Spectacular took the cake as the weekend-starter to top them all. We spent the night flitting between Santa Roderick's lap and the gorgeous theater proper with a hundred and fifty of our closest imaginary friends, with heartmeltingly good sets from some of our favorite bands: Heligoats opened the night up and managed to slay us with the achiest, best kind of hope; Temp Score and Mal de Mer kept the indie-pop party going mid-lineup, and the evening closed out with a solid, gorgeous set from Eef Barzelay. Between the bliss of getting to spend a party-show with such good folks, the full frontal ache of Eef's catalog, and the transition into "Wal-Mart Parking Lot" about midway through the set — our polka-dotted holiday mixtape hearts were just about done-for.

Heligoats {Chris Otepka}:

Temp Score:

Mal de Mer:

Eef Barzelay:

As if that weren't enough to make the weekend sparkle oh-so-bright, we were lucky enough to attend a second Eef-centric party Saturday out at the Madrona Ale House — where he {and Heligoats} took the stage for a small crowd. It was one of those fireplace-y, cozy-vibed nights that we'll always remember, especially the part when the PA got abandoned and three-quarters of Eef's set took place from the other side of our front-row table.

We managed to get a moderately good iPhone recording of one of the Journey covers from Eef's set, which you can take a listen to here.

Thanks to everyone who made our 2011 Holiday Spectacular / Weekend Of Eef so amazingly special. We can't wait to do it all over again next year!

{More photos of the weekend are up — including the ones of you and Santa! — over in the imaginary flickr pool. All photos in this post by Victoria VanBruinisse.}