I'm a sucker for any song with “Remember Me” in the title or lyrics. Well, maybe not any song, but they usually do hook me. We all want to be remembered, especially by the ones who got away. And even the ones who still hate our guts, I suppose.

My freshman-year roommate at a North Carolina college back in 1994 considered himself very progressive in the area of race relations. “I know a few black people on a first-name basis, here's a picture of MLK on my wall,” blah blah blah. This is 1994, not 1964 — I'm just not impressed at this point in time. When I saw that he had a Rolling Stones greatest-hits CD, I asked him if he knew that “Brown Sugar” was about a slave master having sex with his slaves. The look on his face made me think he was going to burn the CD the next morning. He didn't believe me, so I quoted the first verse. It was a dark day in this 19-year-old's battle for civil rights, lemme tell ya …

I'm a sucker for any song with “Remember Me” in the title or lyrics. Well, maybe not any song, but they usually do hook me. We all want to be remembered, especially by the ones who got away. And even the ones who still hate our guts, I suppose.

My freshman-year roommate at a North Carolina college back in 1994 considered himself very progressive in the area of race relations. “I know a few black people on a first-name basis, here's a picture of MLK on my wall,” blah blah blah. This is 1994, not 1964 — I'm just not impressed at this point in time. When I saw that he had a Rolling Stones greatest-hits CD, I asked him if he knew that “Brown Sugar” was about a slave master having sex with his slaves. The look on his face made me think he was going to burn the CD the next morning. He didn't believe me, so I quoted the first verse. It was a dark day in this 19-year-old's battle for civil rights, lemme tell ya …

I'm a sucker for any song with “Remember Me” in the title or lyrics. Well, maybe not any song, but they usually do hook me. We all want to be remembered, especially by the ones who got away. And even the ones who still hate our guts, I suppose.

My freshman-year roommate at a North Carolina college back in 1994 considered himself very progressive in the area of race relations. “I know a few black people on a first-name basis, here's a picture of MLK on my wall,” blah blah blah. This is 1994, not 1964 — I'm just not impressed at this point in time. When I saw that he had a Rolling Stones greatest-hits CD, I asked him if he knew that “Brown Sugar” was about a slave master having sex with his slaves. The look on his face made me think he was going to burn the CD the next morning. He didn't believe me, so I quoted the first verse. It was a dark day in this 19-year-old's battle for civil rights, lemme tell ya …

“Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields,
Sold in a market down in New Orleans.
Scarred old slaver knows he's doin' alright.
Hear him whip the women just around midnight.”

Its not about heroin.

Also, I rise to the defense of “It Don't Come Easy” and “Photograph,” both of which were great AM radio records with big ol' hooks. “Back Off Boogaloo” (also bought on a 45 by me) wasn't bad on that score, either.

You know, I've generally got a lot of time for the Stones, and the deliberately-provocative stance can be entertaining; but sometimes, man, in the desire to shock, ye olde moral compass just falls by the wayside. And the worst part is that Mick probably thought this shit was funny when he came up with it.