Hip-hop marmalade spic and span

Just posted this on Dave's tumblr, my disagreeing with his designating LFO's "Summer Girls" a novelty song and with his contention that LFO are trying to be really stupid:

The song doesn't feel like a novelty to me, but rather just what it seems to be, a summertime song that's steeped in a haze of free-associative nostalgia. And none of the lyrics come across as stupid or strange in that context, since their premise is that a particular time and place, and friendships with particular people, will call forth particular associations. So New Kids had a bunch of hits (yeah, OK, a summer ten years earlier, more or less), Chinese food makes him sick (a reference to a particular incident, you can see it happening among him and his friends), Shakespeare and Paul Revere (not as clear a picture, maybe Will S. is assigned summer reading; LFO are from Massachusetts where Paul Revere's ride is part of official local history, the Boston Marathon run each year on the ride's anniversary), the mixture of references we understand and those we don't making perfect sense given this premise. Rather skillful, I think, more effectively dreamy than it would be without the idiosyncrasies. But not a novelty, given that summer songs are something you get every summer.

Intellectual processes die when interests are merely humored or given free reign

"Have a basic intellectual conversation about music" is as good a mission statement as any. Intellectual processes die when interests are merely humored or given free reign (perhaps Frank's "hallway" trap) and also die, more obviously, when they're stifled with structure. Rock criticism has a serious hallway problem, but the solution isn't to paste "classroom" on it - it's to create a new space.

I recommend Dave's post, "Can Rock Criticism Be an Educative Process?," where he's trying to push the Department Of Dilettante Research idea forward a bit.

Also, I need to do something about my DDR tags. The way I've got them now, my DDR and Department Of Dilettante Research tags include all of my Kuhn posts, which makes those tags not so useful; in the next few days I'll probably untag a lot of those Kuhn ones, except for the ones that specifically address how you go about learning an unfamiliar mode of thought. In the meantime, here are some of the crucial, introductory DDR posts/threads:

Department of Dilettante Research, Part 1

Department Of Dilettante Research, Part 2: Depart Harder

Freakytigger and Poptimist Links for Department Of Dilettante Research

Department Of Dilettante Research, Part 3: The Dilettantists

Diversity and Bullies

The Authority To Teach (Department Of Dilettante Research)

Consequences