Viva Batista

Home Sweet Home

After a week in DC learning the ropes at the new office, and a week in Chicago at N-TEN's Nonprofit Technology Conference (which was great, actually--like the first wedding after your own), today I finally settled into what I expect to be doing most of the time for the next few years--working from home.

That's how I spent the bulk of 2001, my first year as N-TEN's first Executive Director, but things are a little different this time around.  The most important difference is one of the most prosaic: a wireless network.  Life's a lot easier when you're not shackled to a desk.  It's also nice having actual colleagues and an organizational infrastructure to plug into.  Back in 2001, I felt like I was making everything up as I went along, and although that sometimes had its rewards, it also had its frustrations.  Life got much better when I moved to a real office at the end of 2001, and better still when I was lucky enough to hire Holly Ross at the beginning of 2003 and finally had a real colleague.

But I don't think it's going to take two years to hit my stride this time.  I still have a lot to learn, of course, but I feel a little more together, a little more on top of things.  At the moment, I'm sure that's partly because it's just so damn good to be back in California.  This morning Amy and I were up at the crack of dawn because she also started her new job today, but unlike me, she has a two-hour commute :-(

I walked her up to Cole Valley to catch Muni to Caltrain, and after seeing her off, I had a cup of coffee at Tully's and read the sports page, looking out on a scene pretty much like the one above.  And except for the All Steroids, All the Time atmosphere that's hanging over the Giants like a cloud about to burst, it was a damn fine way to start the day.  Sunshine, blue sky, caffeine.  Time to go to work.

Steely Dan

I wasn't a fan during their heyday--too young--but their hits saturated the '70s, so they felt familiar when I started to listen to them more seriously a few years ago.  And my appreciation for Walter Becker, Donald Fagen and their shuffling cast of bandmates just continues to grow the more I listen to them.  I love the way they bring so many things together--cryptically smart lyrics, richly complex tunes buried under those FM-friendly hooks, and this whole ethos that suggests that they got the most out of the '70s without letting the era overwhelm them.

And what a history.  Laboring as ABC studio songwriters, Becker and Fagen recorded their own songs on the side, and when "Do It Again" turns into a surpise hit (#6!) in the Fall of '72, they're suddenly rock stars.  They tour for months on end, driven mercilessly by ABC.  I have to assume they enjoyed at least some of the fruits of the touring life in '73-'74, the nadir of the Decadent West, but it ultimately burned them out, and in July '74, with three successful albums under their belts, they quit the road for good--well, for 20 years, anyway.

Between '74 and '80 they release four more albums, peaking critically and commercially with Aja in '77, which hit #3 behind Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and Billy Joel's The Stranger.  But although 1980's Gaucho is relatively successful, it seems overshadowed by record company wrangling, car accidents, etc.  Becker and Fagen are apparently ready for Steely Dan to be over, and they just...stop.

Fagen puts out The Nightfly in '82 to good reviews (if you're in my demographic you might remember an unusually tasteful music video for "The New Frontier"), but he and Becker basically spend the '80s and early '90s kicking back, noodling around on some cool side projects, and fading into cult status.  And then in the mid-'90s, the bug bit them, and they started playing together and even touring again.  In 2000 they released Two Against Nature, their first new album in 20 years, and it hit #6, and they just kept going, putting out Everything Must Go in 2003.

Looking at Steely Dan's career as a whole, three things make them unusual.  First, it's hard to think of other artists who were as musically and intellectually serious and who also had so many huge hits.  (I'm not saying there aren't any--but off the top of my head none come to mind.)  I'm not sure if that's because Steely Dan essentially buried their bad attitude in head-scratching lyrics and brought fusion to the masses by wrapping it in hooks, or if it's just because the listening public in those days was more comfortable with complicated music.  Eh, probably the former.

Second, I'm still struck by the fact that they were so woven into the texture of the decade, they were such '70s Rock Stars, and yet they seem to have come through that era and that experience as relatively normal people.  A little reclusive, perhaps, but not Basket Cases or Flaming Assholes.

And finally, it's impressive that they took so much time off but were then able to rekindle their collective creative fire so successfully.  I haven't heard either of the two recent albums, so perhaps I should reserve judgment, but it's clear that this is no reunion tour, no nostalgia sell-out.  Impressive on many levels.

If you're interested, I highly recommend the Steely Dan site, particular this detailed history by Pete Fogel.  And props to Matt, who appreciated these guys about ten years before I did and helped turn me on.

On Trying New Things

"...Rather than saying 'No,' I always say 'Yes,' and try it."

Merce Cunningham, 85, in the Feb. 27 S.F. Chronicle