Not Playing Properly: Amateurism as Generic Choice in Three Postpunk Case Studies:

Abstract

Smith played her second round of London concerts. In her review of the performance for the weekly UK music magazine Melody Maker, critic Maureen Paton noted how Smith's appearance was especially captivating for the female members of the audience:A lot of women present clearly got off on the idea of having someone up there to identify with (an attitude with which I have a great deal of sympathy), and there were more yells of encouragement from women than I've ever heard at any other concerts. 1 The fact there were so many "yells of encouragement from women" in the audience demonstrates how exceptional Smith's performance must have seemed. Here was a woman who derived her stage persona from channelling male icons such as Doors-singer Jim Morrison and poet Arthur Rimbaud, and who was not only participating in the hitherto male-dominated field of rock, but was actually leading a rock group. Smith was, in other words, a rock musician with whom the women attending the Hammersmith concert could finally identify.In the rest of her review, however, Paton wrote scathingly about the way Smith appeared to rely too much on her exceptional status as a woman in rock, in lieu of displaying conventional musical skill. But it's precisely this kind of freak originality that Smith exploits so mercilessly by playing the rock and roll hero. The guitar that she hadn't even bothered to learn to play