I’ve spent most of my life feeling like a casual observer of the human condition.
There are entire swaths of thoughts, feelings, and tradition that I don’t understand. It’s not that I think I’m above them in any way; I just don’t get them. I’ve gotten good at faking it, though. I know when to laugh, when to give a knowing look, when to hang back and let a moment breathe.
It’s not all manufactured, I’m not a robot. I have thoughts and feelings too. Mine have just always felt different than most. Not better, not worse, just different. It’s why, when I meet someone who gets me, I tend to hold on to them until my knuckles turn white.
We all need a port in the storm, don’t we?
I’m not a member of any clubs, and I don’t hang out at bars. The internet wiped out any need for most in-person social gatherings, which is unfortunate, because they serve an important function. It’s good to build camaraderie based on a mutual interest. All of us need a little sunshine when the skies are gray.
As an adult, a good litmus test for finding cool people is testing their sense of humor. If someone can laugh with you about something dark, a friendship is usually forged in the fire. If they bristle, you know to treat them with kid gloves. I hadn’t learned that trick yet when I was a kid, I was too preoccupied with figuring out the rules of the world at large.
If all else failed, music was the great equalizer.
…
The Review
Black Crowes
Shake Your Money Maker
1990
Shake Your Money Maker is manifested Deep South magic.
Most people, when describing the Black Crowes’ sound, say the same thing: It’s the Allman Brothers meets the Rolling Stones. At their best, that’s hitting the nail on the head. What sets Shake Your Money Maker apart, and the reason it’s their best seller if I had to speculate, is that the ratio is tweaked in a way we had never seen before and never saw again.
Shake Your Money Maker is 40% Allman Brothers, 50% Rolling Stones, 10% hair metal.
Let’s give our fellow Black Crowes fans a minute to be pissed off before they rejoin the conversation. Listen, I get it. The Crowes are dyed-in-the-wool rock ‘n’ rollers, man. They’re nestled in the bosom of the cosmic poncho, my brother. That’s all fine. I’m just saying that you can’t tell me George Drakoulias didn’t pay attention to the hair metal records of the ‘80s and think to himself, “I bet I could do something cool with that production style.”
And indeed, he did.
I have met multiple people who have told me that when they bought that record, they listened to it so exclusively that friends and family ultimately begged them to stop. I get it; it’s a well-crafted rock ‘n’ roll offering with unmistakable southern charm. Shake Your Money Maker is a seminal cultural experience from a bygone era. As far as debuts go, it’s hard to top. Almost every track has serious single potential, which is a feat unto itself. It’s also a touch too Southern to be classic rock and entirely too rock ‘n’ roll to be country. I’m not sure what record store bin I would need to flip through to find it, and that’s what I love about it.
And can we take a minute to discuss how bonkers its timing was?
The Black Crowes released an almost throwback-style, ‘70s-inspired rock record in 1990, an era in which they didn’t belong. This was at a transitional time in music history when the hair metal wave of the 1980s was being actively choked out of existence by this new thing called grunge. They didn’t fit in anywhere, but “She Talks to Angels” was an undeniable hit that refused to leave the radio waves, and the band managed to carve out a fan base that’s still loyal 35 years later.
Shake Your Money Maker is a record that demands top volume. When I put it on in my car, by the second track, my windows are down, and everyone within a one-block radius is listening to it with me. The opening track, “Twice As Hard,” is more inviting than a Southern grandmother finding out you haven’t eaten all day. Then to follow that up immediately with “Jealous Again,” which sounds like a lost Stones classic, is such a successful knockout punch that it should be convicted of manslaughter.
My personal favorite cut of the record is “Could I’ve Been So Blind?” Why that isn’t the biggest hit they ever released is beyond me. It’s the perfect representation of their loose-but-structured rock ‘n’ roll swagger and so well produced it might as well have been recorded live in a stadium. That’s about as delicious as rock ‘n’ roll with a side of cheese can get.
While I do think Shake Your Money Maker is a triumph, I don’t believe it’s perfect.
There are three ballads, two of them so similar that cutting one would have been hard to notice (looking at you, “Seeing Things”). Moreover, when the 30th anniversary box set was released and we saw all the other songs that weren’t chosen, I was personally baffled. How do you have something as good as “You’re Wrong” or “Waitin’ Guilty” and leave it on the cutting room floor? If you’re going to start with such an impactful one-two punch, why wouldn’t you close with a similar one? “Don’t Wake Me” and “Mercy, Sweet Moan” were sitting right there, ready to shine. Get it together, Robinsons.
Any imperfections are easily forgiven when you allow yourself to succumb to the sound. The blue-eyed, white-boy soul vocals of a young Chris Robinson are as pure and perfect as I’ve ever heard. Although they aren’t as present here as on later releases, the bound-by-blood vocal harmonies from Chris and his brother Rich are their own alluring phenomenon. No Black Crowes review would be complete without taking a moment to acknowledge the subtle brilliance of drummer Steve Gorman, a secret weapon sorely missed on 2024’s Happiness Bastards.
I have spent entirely too much of my adult life talking and thinking about the Black Crowes; just ask any of my exes. Great bands will do that to you, get under your skin and never quite leave. When you meet another member of the sonic cult, there’s an immediate and lasting connection.
Such was the case for one of the most influential figures of my high school career.
…
The Tale
This is a story about teenage rebellion.
All these stories are about teenage rebellion in one way or another, but if I’m being honest, this one is really about a teacher. A good teacher explains the importance of justified rebellion, but a great teacher encourages it. A legend throws caution to the wind and marches right along beside you.
My senior year of high school took place between August of 2007 and May of 2008.
I was a shockingly lazy. Any hopes I had at a bright academic future were immediately dashed when I discovered girls and rock ‘n’ roll records. I never studied for tests, barely did homework, and was a disruptive distraction in class. This wasn’t a Good Will Hunting scenario, where I was secretly a sexy genius in coveralls who had read every book in the library and could afford to sleep through lectures. I was a solid C student, and lucky it wasn’t worse. That’s why, sitting in the cramped and fluorescently lit guidance counselor’s office, I was gobsmacked to learn that I was on track to graduate a semester early.
This was a total accident, I can assure you. A smarter person would have taken that opportunity by the horns and done something useful with it. I could have started college early, or gone straight into the workforce, maybe even taken a few months to relax and travel, sew my wild oats. Instead, I asked if I could split the work of that singular semester into two semesters, go home early every day, and create what was essentially the easiest school day Southeast High School had ever seen.
God bless underfunded public schools, because they said yes.
We worked it out to where I had study hall second period, one real class for third period, and then I went home. The only missing piece to the perfect senior year was a morning elective, and I chose Broadcasting. I’m sure Broadcasting wasn’t its Christian name, but for the life of me, I can’t remember what it was called. The important thing was, that was the class where they produced the morning announcements.
I loved the idea of making the morning announcements. There was something so endearing about the zero-dollar budget and cheesy computer graphics. The senior students wrote and performed terrible sketches, read lackluster school news, and bookended the show with wonderfully antiquated slideshows set to terrible music. It was our own little backwoods Saturday Night Live.
Our Lorne Michaels was named Jeff McDonald.
Rolling into class that first morning is something I’ll always remember. It was at the furthest end of the school, down a staircase, about 20 feet from where the FFA kids had built a working greenhouse outside. We were so separated from the rest of the school, in fact, that just being there felt like we were getting away with something.
There were rows of what were essentially wooden cubicles housing outdated computers where the slideshows were made, flanked by ascending desk seating like you would find in a college classroom. Behind those desks was a blown-up photo of the surface of the moon that took up the entire wall. Just beyond that was a closed control room where the show itself was captured and edited. Beside that room, just beyond double doors, was a stage, a desk, a green screen and camera equipment.
In the middle of that room, soaking everything in, is where I met Sergeant Mac.
Mac—known as Coach Mac to everyone else—was a Marine, a veteran of Desert Storm. He was a Republican and had little patience for nonsense. On one of my first mornings in that class, he verbally decimated two guys who had refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. This was at the apex of my punk era, so as you can imagine, he was my exact opposite in every conceivable way. There was no doubt in my mind that I had made a mistake in signing away a full year of my life to this class, but I was swiftly proven wrong.
Once Sgt. Mac and I started talking about music, he took a genuine interest in me. He taught me how to edit the show, essentially making me its director. He consistently let me pick the outro music, and it was whatever I wanted, Ramones, Clash, Stiff Little Fingers, Cock Sparrer, Generation X, etc. Occasionally, I would throw on one of the bands we had in common, like KISS, AC/DC, or the Black Crowes. One time he even let me end the show with the full original broadcast of the New York Dolls’ performance on the Old Grey Whistle Test.
I loved working in that control room. Getting all the details perfect gave me a sense of purpose. I wanted to learn everything about it, get better at it. The time between “Action” and “Over-and-Out” was the best part of my day. My fellow announcement crew members became a second family to me. Everyone served an essential function, and I don’t want to leave anyone out, but I do want to highlight the ones I worked with the most:
There was Lark, a friend since our first day of homeroom freshman year. She was hilarious, headstrong, and confident, sort of acting as our show runner. If we were to continue with the SNL analogy, she was our Rosie Shuster. She taught me the ropes more than anyone, and once even dressed like me to deliver the announcements just to bust my chops. While Lark and I had always gotten along famously, I believe having that class together is ultimately the reason we’re still friends today.
Nick was my most frequent on-camera collaborator. He was lightning fast on his feet and always innately understood the intricacies of what made something funny. Looking back at old clips while preparing for this, what stood out to me the most was just how innately good Nick was. He was miles ahead of me in most every measurable metric. When the cameras turned on, I launched into a Jack Black-style comedic assault, throwing spaghetti at the wall. Nick was surgical and precise.
Matt, who you’ll remember from past Tales, worked mostly behind the scenes. He always had the best ideas and understood the filmmaking aspect better than all of us combined. He was also the best editor, an aspect of which the importance cannot be overstated. Matt could take our dumb ideas and elevate them from a C to an A with a couple tweaks. Matt, Nick, and I eventually combined forces into what we called the Dream Team, a title appropriately arrogant for our age.
And of course, there was Sgt. Mac himself.
Mac dutifully aired all our ideas, some of which were seriously weird. There were times where I would stand in front of the camera and do chunks of Eugene Mirman’s standup routine. I hosted a sports segment where we would bring on student athletes and go out of our way to not ask them about their sport. On one occasion, I recapped a recent episode of The Office. On another, I subtly encouraged the viewers not to attend the game that was being promoted.
We had a regular, school-mandated Word of the Week segment that could not have been treated with less reverence. When the word was “Communication,” I spoke in gibberish and had Nick translate. Like everything else we made, it wasn’t pre-written or rehearsed. I surprised Nick with it, and being the natural improv wizard he was, merrily we rolled along. When the word was “Mission-Conscious,” we showed clips from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. When the word was “Commitment,” we showed a clip from an unaired intro where Nick had accidentally lost his balance while balancing on a railing and smashed himself in the testicles. It was pirate radio at its finest.
Sgt. Mac didn’t seem to mind any of it; he was genuinely happy we were taking an interest and having fun. Such a strong level of mutual trust was built, however, that things started to get out of hand. It’s not that we didn’t appreciate the level of responsibility we had; it’s that we were 17 …
Outside of our classroom, we didn’t know what kind of buzz we were generating with the student body. We were sure some people liked what we were doing, but for all we knew, the rest could be completely ignoring us as they napped through the 15-minute program. What we did know, however, is that most of the teachers hated us.
Coaches started complaining that the leather-clad longhair was hosting the sports segment instead of an actual athlete. English teachers opined Word of the Week being treated like a punchline. Others didn’t appreciate our choice of music. The details changed, but the chorus was much the same: The show had become distracting, disrespectful, and we were taking it too far.
Naturally, we started going even harder.
It was reckless and misguided, but isn’t that what being young is about? We believed in ourselves, in each other, in our stupid little show, so much that we were willing to go to war over it. In my opinion, that passion only made the content better. We soon flew too close to the sun with wings of wax, however, and got sloppy. Three things happened in short succession that ultimately created a perfect storm:
First, some underclassman girls had beef with some upperclassman girls and used the announcements to settle the score. They basically just drew mustaches and funny faces on their pictures using Microsoft paint and ran them in an intro, pretty toothless stuff, but it created a tizzy. Parents called the school; administrators got involved; it was a mess. That put all of us on everyone’s radar in a big, bad way.
Second, those same underclassman girls were ordered to deliver an apology to the entire school in an upcoming episode. They wrote letters, dressed nice, really gave it their all. We were under strict instructions not to add one ounce of levity to those proceedings, and this was a punishment for a serious situation. I couldn’t resist, though. About halfway through the video I put the synth-heavy intro to “Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake under the footage, gradually increasing the volume until it swelled. Sgt. Mac pretended to be pissed afterwards, but I saw him laugh when he watched it live.
Third, and I know this sounds heavy, but one of our skits was deemed racist. I was taking Spanish at the time, and I spoke a little on SHS Sports. I didn’t use an accent or anything; I just said some words in Spanish, and Matt translated them. That’s it; that was the whole thing. But an accusation was made to the right people at the right time, and we were off the air.
Nothing gold can stay, Pony Boy.
We didn’t know it at the time, but Mac fought hard on our behalf. He yelled, cussed, and put his job on the line for us. We didn’t see that, though. We were too stubborn to see it. All we saw was that he bent to the pressure and suspended us from going in front of the camera. He was being tough because he had no choice. I was replaced on SHS Sports by a real-life jock. Word of the Week was cancelled. There were no more sketches. The show went from the Sex Pistols to Donnie & Marie overnight.
For the first time that year, I was directionless. The show had been my life, mostly because I didn’t have a lot going on, but also because I sincerely loved it that much. We didn’t even get to say goodbye; we were just on the air one morning and off the next, like Charlie Rose.
Mac could tell we were miserable, so, administration be damned, he eventually made us a deal. If we put out a survey, and we could generate tangible proof that the students wanted it, we could come back. Reinvigorated by this opportunity, not only did we make a survey and release it during every lunch period that week, but we also made several videos encouraging people to participate. Because we were snarky teens, we made sure to wear button-down shirts and speak in perfect grammar while addressing the camera. We mockingly implied we were ashamed of our past behavior. Then the surveys started flooding in.
Overwhelmingly … no one cared.
As a matter of fact, they mostly came back covered in profanity and crude drawings. I don’t know what we were expecting from 1000 bored high school kids, but we weren’t met with love and admiration. There would be no Dead Poet’s Society show of solidarity. At first, I think we were a little dismayed. Then, the longer we sat with it, the funnier it became. This thing that meant so much to us could not have mattered less to the audience for whom we were making it.
Mac, being the absolute mensch he was, let us go back on the air anyway. There were only a few weeks left in the school year, so the risk wasn’t that high. We made sure to color inside the lines a little more, but we still made what we wanted. On some level, I think he was proud of us. He was able to use us to give the administration a finger, something I know for a fact he enjoyed doing.
At the end of the year, right before graduation, I filled out one of those commemorative note cards and told him what a hero he had been.
…
The Aftermath
Sgt. Mac died during the pandemic.
I found out about it while scrolling through Facebook, which unfortunately is how I discover almost everything these days. It’s strange when someone who was once so important in your life becomes data on a screen. There he was, a picture and a name, comments of memories. As it turns out, he wasn’t even a Sergeant. He was a Major, a higher rank. He just never corrected me.
Jeff McDonald wasn’t just my teacher; he was my friend. He made a tangible difference in my life. He believed in me, encouraged me, fought on my behalf. He let me use that old media room as a sanctuary when the noise of high school got too loud. He was a relic from a different time, probably enough to make a parent’s head explode by today’s standards, but he was a perfect fit for me, for all of us.
Real life isn’t a movie, so I never got to say goodbye. COVID was like that, unfortunately. Not everyone knew they were going to check out early. I did get to see him a couple times after graduation, though.
When our beloved Black Crowes released Before the Frost… Until the Freeze in 2009, I burned him a copy and brought it to the school. I did the same thing when KISS released Sonic Boom. I didn’t want to be one of those guys who hangs around their old stomping grounds when they should have moved on, so I never made a meal of it. I would park by that old FFA greenhouse, pop in and check on the old man.
Our two paths couldn’t have been further diverged, politically. We had mostly lost touch by the time the pandemic hit, but I’m positive we would have been on opposite sides of the spectrum on that too. At the end of the day, though, what does it matter? What does it have to do with the price of onions?
Mac and I always had music. That’s where my memories of him will forever live. If you’re reading this, take a minute to listen to the Black Crowes, or KISS, or even better, Mötley Crüe. Play it loud enough for him to hear. If you’re a dirty liberal like me, who questions everything, consider standing for the Pledge of Allegiance next time you’re at a ballgame. Even if that’s the only time you ever actively participate, do it for him. He would consider that a major win.
Thanks for everything, Sgt. Mac. Over and out.
