On The First Day Of Christmas My True Love Gave To Me....

......Caroling With The Two E.'s.

All the gang came by.

The F. family who always remind me, somehow, of the Swiss Family Robinson even though they only live about 10 blocks away from us......

Our daughter, littler e.'s best friend M. and her Mom who we know from the time when we lived together on the street of Kings....

Our favorite guitar man D, and his daughter M.....

Frequent family friend flyers/drivers, not to mention scheduling saviors, Mosey and Bindi-La.....

My wife C.'s comrade in song Mo, who keeps us in key.....

Our new friends M. & B. from Germany, who grew up on the Eastern side of Berlin and walked across town the day the Wall came down as teenagers, who brought their brand new baby Otto.......

And luckily, the current teenagers, our other daughter Bigger E. and her friend N., were there too......

Because they had the power.

Really.

*****

We've been doing this caroling thing since back in the halcyon days when we lived in a place that was so communal that I kept a key to everyone's abode under my computer down in the original Subterranean Blues Room, just in case they needed something done, found, or fixed when they were away.

It was 42 units of wide open spaces and even wider open imaginations.

But it's all gone now.

Demolished by the Developer's axe.

We tried to buy the place up ourselves and save it from being turned into $700 a square foot postage stamps b/w marble counter-tops and 2 metre-high fences a whole bunch of times, but we were always a million or so short.

All of which taught me two things.....

First- a million dollars is still enough money that it's worth singing about.

Second - a million dollars ain't worth squat compared to a real community.

****

Anyway.

Now we live in a new place.

And we're still singing the carols from the same old songsheets, typos and all.

And almost every single one of the folks in our new neighborhood loves it when we come by.

So much so that they give us all kinds of stuff to eat and drink, and some of them try to get us to come in and join their parties.

Heckfire, even gruff ol' Gerry from across the street held out his (cameraless) cell phone so that his friend on the line could hear us too.

It was all very fun and, this being Lotusland, it wasn't too cold.

But it was sprinkling just enough that we decided to go back inside for the hot chocolate and the gossip.

Which was fun too.

And best of all, the teenagers weren't done.

So I got out the keyboard, the little Fender boogie-amp, and my stratoscaster copy so that Bigger E. could help us all skate away in a way that I'm pretty sure Ms. M. would be darned proud of for sure.

Then, we put on our Santa hats and went all Bruce on the assembled throng.

With littler e. playing the part of the Big Man.

Even Bindi-La, who I'm pretty sure is no fan of the Bossman, approved.

Why?

'Cause it ain't no sin to be glad your alive.

OK?

______
Image at the top of the post is of the two E's and me (or at least the business end of my Strat-O-Matic copy) belting out our version of 'Santa Claus Is Coming To Town'.
Links to E Street Shuffling are from a concert that took place in the Dutch city of Arnhem in early December. Whole lotta history in Arnhem, sure is, including, of course, a very important WWII Canadian connection.
Apologies for obsessing, but that last link, for those interested, has one king heckfire version of 'Badlands', not so much because of anything new musically, but rather because the people in the crowd refuse to let the song end when they keep humming the refrain over and over and over again as drummer Max Weinberg tries to kill it. Finally, the Mighty Max just gives in and starts the engines revving again. Anyway, littler e. helped me work it all out this morning on the Keyboard (a straight E-A-B progression with a few Susses thrown in just for good measure) while Bigger E. and C. went shopping - sure hope they got me that harmonica in the Key of E.


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