For several years I lived in New York City, the jazz capital of the world, and I virtually never heard jazz unless I went to a jazz club. Upon returning to Seattle, I was amazed and delighted to hear the music I loved turning up at restaurants and cafes everywhere. There I was, my first week at the Weekly, lunching on the waterfront at Elliott’s Oyster House, hearing not tourist-friendly soft ‘n’ easy favorites, but Mose Allison on the stereo. Mose Allison!

But frankly, the overkill has since gotten on my nerves. Could we just cool it a little with the jazz already? Seattle restaurants, especially those of a certain upscale persuasion, seem to have embraced the music as their uniform recorded soundtrack.

At Wild Ginger I’m hearing Coltrane, at Marco’s it’s Etta Jones; Flying Fish is playing Ben Webster, Boat Street’s blaring Brownie, Stumbling Goat’s got Bird—and on and on, all over the city, in a monotone of retro swing and bebop. Jazz has been transformed into the merlot of music in this town: predictable, safe, denoting an automatic and easy sophistication, as inevitable and unavoidable as “wild” greens and salmon. Honestly, I was grateful to hear Gipsy Kings at Seattle Catch the other night, just as a breather.

Mind you, I love jazz. I often write about jazz for this newspaper. I was a jazz musician for many years. Jazz, broadly speaking, is my favorite kind of music. The trouble is, jazz just isn’t the perfect accompaniment to all menus and all settings. Even I start to go a little crazy when I’m force-fed staccato trumpet licks, galumphing bass, and trinkle-tinkle piano every single time I sit down to a restaurant meal.

Sure, you go to a brassy old three-martini bar like Ponti and get some expertly chosen, hard-swinging big band—I’m all for that. But when I recently visited one new Belltown establishment, with a Zenlike name, quiet ambience, and subtle flavors, they were firing some Cannonball-style altoist through the stereo speakers: His reedy power was totally distracting from the rest of the place. They’d never do something so foolish with the food. But jazz seems to be a kind of reflex element of local decor; you don’t have to think about it—it’s jazz. Nobody questions jazz. People aren’t even allowed to say they don’t like jazz.

Seattle’s jazz embrace was made early on by Starbucks. With its “Blue Note” Blend coffee, special jazz CDs, and extensive marketing partnership with “Ken Burns’ Jazz,” Starbucks has long tried to associate its brand, and its cafes, with the music. The store windows recently carried big posters of a 1940s jazz scene with a caption that said something like: “This is the sound of coffee.” (Hmm, I believe that would be more like the sound of heroin.) The Seattle coffee giant has done a lot to promote popular enjoyment of jazz, but has also done much to transform jazz into a lifestyle accessory, like a frothy mocha and the right handbag. Now everyone employs jazz as the official badge of affluence, intelligence, and good taste.

So, restaurateurs, please, how about we make a trade: You put something a little more interesting on the stereo, and I, in turn, will always order the special. Deal?