The Friday Five: More “Mind” Songs

On Monday, I chose five songs that had “mind” in the title and invited you to suggest others, promising I’d play the nominees if I got five of them. Well, I got three, and said, what the heck, close enough for government work, and chose two more. So here are five more songs with “mind” in the title, for your listening pleasure…

Friday on my Mind – The Easybeats A classic from 1966. Arlee Bird suggested this one.

You Were Always on My Mind – Willie Nelson Our friend Carol from church and Uncle Jack both suggested this one, and I can’t believe I didn’t think of it.

Mind Games – John Lennon One of my two contributions to the list, the title track from his 1973 album.

My Back Is Achin’ (And My Mind’s No Better) – The Good Rats Had never heard of this, but gave it a listen and liked it. Another Arlee Bird suggestion.

Too Much On My Mind – The Kinks I was looking for a fifth and turned up this one. This is from their Face To Face album, released in 1966.

I’m sure you can think of some more; if you do, leave me a comment and I’ll add it to the playlist.

If you haven’t already voted in my latest Battle of the Bands (Battle “Please Mr. Postman” pitting The Saturdays against a trio of young ladies from The New Mickey Mouse Club circa 1989), you have until whenever I get to posting the results, probably sometime Sunday, to let your voice be heard. Pay no attention to Grumpy Cat…

That’s the Friday Five for May 20, 2016.

Monday’s Music Moves Me: Five Songs With “Mind” In The Title

A week ago last Friday, I did a Friday Five of songs that had “head” in the title, and promised I would do the word “mind” the following week. Well, last Friday I was exhausted, and forgot completely about it, using the word “tired” instead. So, since it’s Freebie Week for Monday’s Music Moves Me, I’m going to go ahead and give you five “mind” songs. Now, there are a bunch of songs with “mind” in the title that are not among these five; if you all come up with five more, I’ll do them Friday. Deal?

Journey to the Center of the Mind – The Amboy Dukes: Ted Nugent was living in the Chicago area when he formed the Amboy Dukes in the mid-Sixties. This rose to #16 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968.

Windmills of Your Mind – Sting: Michel Legrand wrote the music and Alan and Marilyn Bergman wrote the English lyrics for this, which was used in the 1968 movie The Thomas Crown Affair, starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1968. When the movie was remade in 1999, starring Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo, the song was redone by Sting and used in the soundtrack. It’s become a standard, covered by such artists as Dusty Springfield, Ed Ames, Neil Diamond, Mel Torme, and Swing Out Sister.

You Were On My Mind – We Five: Written in 1962 by Sylvia Fricker, of Ian and Sylvia fame, it became We Five’s only hit in 1965. Billboard ranked it #5 for 1965.

Georgia On My Mind – Ray Charles: I would have heard about it from someone had I not included this one. This was proclaimed Georgia’s state song in 1979, and Ray Charles’s version is the best-known. It was written by Hoagy Carmichael, who allegedly named it for his sister.

If You Could Read My Mind – Gordon Lightfoot: I’d have also heard about it from someone (and you know who you are) if I had left this one out, although you know I would have gotten to it eventually. This was Gordon’s first US single, and it reached #5 on the Hot 100 and spent a week at #1 on the Easy Listening chart in 1971.

And that’s Monday’s Music Moves Me for May 16, 2016.

Monday’s Music Moves Me is sponsored by X-Mas Dolly, Callie, Stacy, and Naila Moon, so be sure and visit them, where you can also find the Linky for the other participants.

The Brain and the Mind #socs

The prompt for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday is mind.

Regular readers of the blog will know that one of my interests is memetics. Some people think it’s generally BS, but I think it goes a long way to explaining why people are the way they are. I’ve wanted to write about memetics, but had a hard time explaining it, but the prompt got me thinking about this analogy (remember these from the SAT?):

meme:mind::gene:brain

The brain is the physical structure that sits in your head and gives the orders that keep you breathing and tell you when it’s time to eat and go to the bathroom. The properties of the brain are determined primarily by genetics, those strands of DNA that determine everything else about you (your gender, color of hair, skin, and eyes, build, etc.). (I’m not a geneticist, nor was I especially good at biology, and haven’t a clue about physiology or anatomy, so I’m sure that isn’t a good explanation. Work with me, OK?)

The mind, on the other hand, is the logical structure that uses the brain to process thoughts, ideas, opinions, baseball scores, and so on. The brain does the physical stuff (fires the synapses and sends the signals to the rest of the body), the mind does the logical stuff (processes the events and burns them into the mind, forms its own opinions and reactions based on what it already knows, blah blah blah). The mind is determined by the memes that are given to it, such as “step on a crack, break your mother’s back,” “if you lie, you’ll go to hell and burn in the unquenchable flames for eternity,” and “the Cubs will never win another World Series.”

To put it another way, it’s like a computer: the brain is the hardware, the mind the software. The brain has its structure and ability to store and process information, while the mind tells the brain how to deal with the information, which information to store, which to reject (and to what degree, i.e. whether to laugh it off or beat someone to within an inch of their life). Just as the engineers who design and build the computer decide on the hardware and the programmers determine the software, the genes build the brain while the memes determine what goes in and how it’s processed.

There will be a test next week. Be sure to study.

If you’d like to see more examples of Stream of Consciousness writing, or think you might like to do some on your blog, follow this link to Linda Hill’s blog, where she has all the information.