From their genesis, the Rolling Stones have been putting a white spin on a very black form of music, almost a parody were it not for their complete earnestness about themselves. They developed a tongue-in-cheek approach to the music they played later, but as much as they made fun of different genres, there was always a bit of admiration and tribute in their spoofs.

In “Dead Flowers,” that sense of spoofing is at its highest, and the source material is ripe for ridicule. The song is a send-up of the country-western genre from fingertips to toes, dripping with subtle sarcasm. Mick even tries to imitate an American cowboy accent, sounding like Johnny Cash if he were doing an impression of himself. “Dead Flowers” is supposed to make you laugh, but it ends up sounding strangely authentic. It proves that the Stones’ wicked sense of humor is still intact, even if the weariness of sex, drugs and rock and roll are taking their toll.

“You Gotta Move,” in the opposite way, isn’t even close to being meant as a joke, yet I can’t listen to it without it seeming like a plastic, showroom parody of the blues and gospel. Every element of the song is played completely straight, or at least that’s what the Stones were going for. But by the time it gets to Mick singing in a near-falsetto to match the guitar riff, my laughter breaks. Maybe it’s the fact that Mick tries to do another voice imitation, this time of a black Southern Baptist preacher. Since I find southern people (particularly Christians) to be slightly ridiculous, it’s hard for me to get completely serious about a song like “You Gotta Move.”

these are hillbillies, and not exactly representative of southerners…

Southern Americans have a particular mindset and package of social standards. But being a New Englander through and through, I often forget that I have my own mindset and package of social standards. Too much I think of myself as the default, and anyone different is just weird. This is one of the problems with being human. The biggest place I face this is in my thought process about those from the American south. I’ve tried to combat this (to little or no avail), but one of my hang-ups is that when a person talks in a southern accent, I automatically assume they are of extremely substandard intelligence. “Yoo shoor doo gaat purty teeth…”

Combine that with my high-minded, northern sensibilities about Christianity, and you get some dangerous snobbery on my part. The fact that I am a Christian and yet am comfortable with women in the ministry, am open to ideas about the sin status of homosexuality, and think evolution is a million times more plausible than 7-day-creationism puts me at odds with a lot of Christians that live in the south. But at all times I need to remember (and they do, too…) that no matter the size of our disagreements and differences in mindset, we still have the most important thing in common, and that is that we are children of the Most Holy God. That trumps everything else.

Sticky Fingers enjoys a dual nature, as do other Stones albums before and after it. It shifts between hard and soft, though some albums do it more gracefully than others. That’s why you have a song like “Wild Horses” right next to “Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’.” While “Wild Horses” is a sedate and kinda weepy number, “Knockin’” segues from it beautifully with a bluesy distorted guitar and Keith playing a monster of a riff. The song itself is fairly standard except for that savage riff, but the real gem starts halfway through.

Guitarist Mick Taylor says that the band finished the song after 3 and a half minutes and started putting down their instruments, but Taylor kept right on playing. I imagine he was in a sort of blues trance, subconsciously wanting the haze to go on longer. The rest of the band followed suit and started playing again, including Bobby Keys on saxophone. They didn’t even know the tape was still rolling, but they got another 4 minutes of footage. It’s pure blues gold.

After the slight pause of “You Gotta Move,” the vinyl flips and we start the second side with “Bitch.” Like Led Zep’s “The Lemon Song,” it details how a man is entirely sexually beholden to a woman. At the mere sound of her voice, he “salivate[s] like a Pavolv dog.” It’s ironic that most of human history has seen the subjugation of women, sometimes being crushed on the male boot. Yet women, I think, have always had this avenue of power over men.

Lysistrata is a play by classical Greek playwright Aristophanes, first performed in Athens in 411 BC, and the plot of this comedy revolves around a group of women who withhold sexual privileges to their husbands in an effort to get them to negotiate an end to the Peloponnesian War. This careful wielding of the power of sex by women can’t sit well with men, who are used to being top dog. This might be why it’s described as a “bitch” in this song.

It makes me wonder: as women are gaining more of an equal share in the arenas of the workplace, the home and politics, will they find that their trump card of sex is decreasing in value? Might men eventually no longer view sex as the most important thing in the universe?

Ba-dum-bum! Thanks, folks, you’ve been great! I’ll be here all week!