My late mother used to say if you can't say something nice about someone don't say anything at all. Then she developed cancer and died. I don't think it's healthy to always hide behind a false smile and you eventually get to an age, if you're lucky, that the opinions of other people just don't don't count so much.
I have a friend who's a talented musician and has absolutely no qualms telling you why he doesn't like Rock & Roll or The Beatles (?!). Because of him I'm learning to be honest. In the past if he or anyone else asked me to go to a winery to hear a Jazz band I'd probably just go along thinking my friend wanted some company. Now I say I don't drink wine and I don't like Jazz. That's right; I DON'T LIKE JAZZ.
Jazz is a very unforgiving style of music. If it's played at all sloppy it's terrible, unlike the Blues, and if it's played pristine and precise it can come off as sterile. There's a fine line between accurate and robotic.
Another friend of mine took me to see a friend of his play recently and it turned out to be a band with a lot of Jazz influences along with some Pop and R & B. They played well but only old hits. Another aspect of reaching that age where you no longer care what other people think of you and can be brutally honest is that I can admit I don't like cover bands. Bands that play other people's songs, unless they change them so much as to make the tune their own such as Yes's version of Paul Simon's America or Devo's Satisfaction, serve only one purpose; dance music.
People who go to hear cover bands are actually coming to dance which means they're really coming to meet people of the opposite sex with whom to have sex. But you really can't dance to Jazz, unless you dance by yourself, so Jazz is, in my opinion, a strictly mental exercise and thus a more personal experience. There is a saying; Jazz is for musicians that don't remember how the song goes. It really does seem like Jazz musicians are indulging themselves and I like improvisation in Rock. Maybe it's the particular scales Jazz players use that sound to me like they're always running finger exercises. After a while I'm just not impressed with how fast you can play a scale.
Naturally, I can't write a review of the band I saw since I didn't care for the style of music they played so I didn't really enjoy them but that doesn't mean they weren't good at what they did. I just don't like what they do.
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