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I am shocked by the crap that passes for jazz these days. It is a disgrace to call one guy playing guitar in a coffee shop jazz. Number one, jazz can't be played by just one person; it's a team effort. Someone's got to supply the beat, and someone's got to hash out the improv. Two, the guitar is a jazz instrument as much as the banjo is a rock instrument. Of course, you'll see the banjo pop up here and there in rock music, but one man rocking out on his banjo hardly constitutes rock music. Similarly, a guitarist playing a riff doesn't constitute jazz. Jazz requires drums, a piano, a bass¹ and a trumpet, but you can sometimes substitute a saxophone for a trumpet. Notice that there's no guitar in that list. Of course, that's not an exhaustive list. A full jazz band might include a trumpet, saxophone, clarinet, trombone and sometimes the guitar, but jazz never revolves around the guitar.

Anyway, I'm going on this rant because someone said that there was going to be live jazz at a coffee shop in town. I skipped an academic lecture on morphemes in sign language so that I could witness jazz.² When I got to the coffee shop, I was disappointed to find a single guitar player playing some lame riffs. I had this feeling of combined disappointment and fury. I left the coffee shop feeling totally disgusted, but I went to a bar instead and felt better.

1. The bass is not a guitar. A bass has four strings; a guitar has six.
2. I would skip a week of class to go to a Wynton Marsalis concert if he were in town. I would also skip my own wedding if I had the chance to see Glenn Miller resurrected from the dead.