This past Friday night was a cozy evening at Wakefield’s Black Sheep Inn, celebrating a milestone 21st birthday with one of my favourite people, silkscreening gurus and musicians, Meredith Luce — accompanied by the ever-ready Mandates: Eric Vieweg, Dean Watson and Tim Watson.

The great tunes were rounded out by Meredith’s bet-winning version of a Backstreet Boys hit, and home-baked goodies — supplied and snuck in by her lovely parents. Whether it’s her music or her mad graphic skills, I have a feeling you may hear Meredith’s name come up again.

In other happy music-related news from this past week, Dan Mangan (whom I’ve raved about before here) was named “Artist Of The Year” at XM Satellite’s Verge Music Awards. Huge, happy & well-deserved congrats, Dan! Here’s a lil’ peek at a recent video of his — keep yours ears peeled for Veda Hille:

I can’t wait for the Robots video to come out next…

good peeps, music Birthday, congratulations, Dan Mangan, Meredith Luce, XM Satellite Verge Music Awards

Huge thanks to everyone who entered Serena and my first joint contest! There were 84 actual entrants, 111 ballots (with all the twitter and blog add-ons), and just about enough positive feedback to make our heads grow a few sizes each. We really appreciate all your interest and kind words — thank you!

The six winners are [drum roll please!]:

1. Summer from …to paraphrase… — chose a One a Penny tee
2. Aliofish from Now We Are Three — chose Placemat II
3. Mike, as in Michael Huen — chose a Life is but a Dream te
4. Bridgett from Perideau Designs
5. Taylor from Curlyfry SC’s Collage
6. Trevor Teed

(For anyone who may have noticed, I did have to redraw. Our original #4 winner was someone named Caitlin, whose email address didn’t work. So Bridgett and Taylor got bumped up, and Trevor was our next number drawn!)

good peeps, m chen wears congratulations, giveaway winners