The other day, I was sitting and waiting with a co-worker for a meeting to start. As I spoke with her, she started singing short snippets of songs that sprang into her mind, plucked at random from words I had just been saying. After a couple of rounds of this, I told her that she was like a “clang association jukebox.”
A clang association, you see, is a kind of speech pattern that often accompanies thought disorders, typified by the speaker stringing words together because they sound alike. When, in a classic episode, a stimulant-addled Lisa Simpson mutters “pep pills, pep pills, Beverly Sills” under her breath, that is an example of a clang association.
Anyhow, my colleague and I agreed that “Clang Association Jukebox” would be a great name for a rock album. And that got me thinking that a lot of psychiatric terms would make good names for rock bands. In addition to The Clang Association (still my favorite), who could resist albums by Word Salad or Flight of Ideas? (I see from Wikipedia that someone has already had this idea.)
Hypomania. Reptilian Stare. Cyclothymic. So many choices.
So here’s this week’s question — what jargon from your work or profession would make a kick-ass rock band name? The more divorced from common parlance, the better.
[Lame aside for attorneys — I’ve always thought Ray’s Ipsa Loquitur would be a great name for a bar across the street from a courthouse.]
Faraday Rotation
The Diamond Scribes
Signal-to-Noise
Ooooo, we have lots! Brain in a Vat, Repugnant Conclusion, Forms of Purposiveness, Akrasia, Inverted Spectrum, Backward Causation, A Fortiori, Emergent Properties, Propositional Attitudes, Conceivability of Zombies
I was going to mention that my Philosophy 101 prof pointed out a few decades ago that The Young Hegelians would be a cool band name, but I just googled and found that the subjunctive is no longer appropriate.
The Goddam Users
For a philosophy movement band name, I think I would have to put my money on the Logical Positivists – or maybe the Vienna Circle.
I think The Plackets would make a nice band name.
Hofstadter and the Paranoiacs