"My experience is that any performer is probably far more critical of his/her own performance than any listener would be!"
Would that were the case.
Depends on whether it is a regular occurrence or not.
I've been involved in fierce and often hurtful arguments on this forum about applying standards to sessions that are open to the public and have been told quite firmly that to do so is "elitist"
Everybody can have an off night, but if someone incapable of relating one note to the other, turns up week after week, what do you do?
I've know in to happen with someone who turned up week after week expecting to sing and proving she couldn't each time she opened her mouth.
She declined all offers of help and when in the end, we were forced to stop asking the particular her (difficult to do if you take it in turns around the circle) she walked out in a huff and we received a stroppy letter a couple of weeks later from her partner.
Recently we had a thread entitled "where did we go wrong?" or similar.
Among the 'Joiners in' and 'anything from Mozart to Mantovani' approach to running a club, I would put declining standards somewhere near the top.
I really think the club scene has been going long enough to have outgrown the old "near enough for folk-song" chestnut.
Jim Carroll