Sunday 27 April 2014

all that jazz

It's no good, I don't like jazz.  Or at least, not the sort of modern jazz that jazz fans admire, only the 1920s retro style that serious jazz enthusiasts sneer at.  I gave it an honest go last night, and while two hours of Christy Moore flew by in a flash, one hour of modern jazz seemed to stretch on interminably.  The friends we'd asked to come with us said the band were very good, and one of them is a jazz drummer himself in his spare time, so it was my fault, not the performers'.  I just can't get into it.  I don't know why not.  Our friend said that jazz consists of variations on simple and repetitive tunes, but that's true of Philip Glass and Eno's ambient music, and I like them.  Taste is a very personal thing.

It didn't help that we had half a dozen women on the other three-fifths of our table who talked all the way through, including in the second half, when the committee member behind the jazz concert had introduced the band back on stage with a plea to belt up and listen, as the band had been playing their socks off and were now going to do some quieter material.  They said they were on a social night out and didn't want to shush.  The Systems Administrator said afterwards on the way home that the format of the event was probably too confusing, whether it was meant to be a formal concert, at which people were quiet and listened, or a club, in which they were at liberty to chat to their friends.  Sitting people down at tables with access to a bar for an hour before you give them anything to eat is probably not conducive to creating a reverential, concert atmosphere.

I wasn't convinced by the fish and chips, though some people ate them.  The fish was OK, but the chips were about as soggy as you'd expect after eighty-five portions had been put in cardboard boxes inside plastic boxes and driven five miles up the road.  My attempt to procure the SA a non-fish alternative backfired, since the chip shop ended up sending two helpings of deep fried chicken for the non-fish eaters.  After taking one sniff of the chicken, the SA refused to even take it out of its bag, and subsisted on chips.

There was enough cake left over to serve, at a rough estimate, fifty people.  Fortunately all the meringues went, so the SA and I are not left wrestling with the choice of eating or binning them.  I like them at a party, but not as normal everyday fare, and the SA barely eats sweet things at all. On the other hand, we both abhor food waste.  I'm afraid I ignored our Chairman's plea, or rather instruction, that we must all take a black bin bag of waste home with us.  I thought that making somebody allergic to fish, who had already been exposed to the rankest piece of fried chicken in Christendom, sit in a car for a half hour journey accompanied by an entire bin bag of discarded fish and chips was beyond the call of duty.

The pile of washing up was monumental, so at least the fish and chips saved us from having to wash plates as well as pudding bowls and about a million spoons.  The Treasurer's wife, who is not on the committee and doesn't like jazz either, nobly washed up all the dishes, while I dried until reinforcements arrived, and I ran out of dry tea towels, having taken five.  I'm sure that originally when we hiked the price up from fifteen pounds a head to seventeen pounds fifty, part of the justification was that we'd be able to afford some paid help, but in the event it never materialised, other than an immensely polite music student whose day job with the music society is as page turner.

A flurry of emails this morning congratulating ourselves pronounced the event a success.  I kept quiet.  I can't face another jazz concert.

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