The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

Smooth jazz killed my brother Randy. He was coming into the S curves on I-5 just south of Seattle, listening to radio KYEZ, “Mellow Sounds of the Spheres,” when the music transported him into a trance-like state and he crashed into the side of a sixteen-wheeler bringing engine parts into Boeing.

I called Randy on his cellphone moments before his death. We had planned to meet at Safeco Field for a Promise Keepers convention and he was late. Outside in the parking lot, I could hear they had already started the sobbing and back-slapping without us.

Our last worldly conversation went as follows:

Randy: Hello?

Me: Randy, it’s me. You’re late for Keepers, dude!

Randy: I’m almost there. Hey, let me switch the phone to my other hand while I turn down the smooth jazz—Oh, shit!

I sued radio KYEZ. My case was basically that a lethal brew of whale calls and flaccid piano playing had driven my brother to his death. I lost.

Smooth jazz killed my brother and KYEZ assassinated his character. All it took was their lawyers mentioning the Santana CD in Randy’s car and the jury started muttering and pinching fingers to their lips in the international hand signal for “tokin’ on a fatty.” I knew Randy would never have taken drugs before a Promise Keepers meeting, not even hallucinogenics, but never mind that. Soon the KYEZ lawyers were contending he was a classic rock listener. They started talking demographics: smooth jazz listeners were peaceful law-abiding citizens, but classic rock listeners (like my brother, they maintained) were middle-aged losers slumped in beanbag chairs in their parents’ basement, plotting half-assed misdemeanors under the wan glow of a grow lamp. This was an alarmingly accurate portrayal of my brother, but completely circumstantial. The judge, who looked to be eating peanuts during the whole trial, overruled every one of my objections, and he merely snickered when a KYEZ lawyer mentioned Bob Seger and flapped his arms in a derisive way. Never once did one of those lawyers look me in the eye or acknowledge my brother’s tragic death. They seemed to think I was a crackpot.

When I stood up to make my closing argument, the courtroom grew dark and cold, like a great cloud full of snow had crept in to hear the verdict. I faced the jury and tried to make my voice sound Gregory Peck-ish.

“‘Mellow Music of the Spheres’, feh! Most people worry about satanic lyrics by long-haired scofflaws who bite the heads off bats and pee on their fans, but smooth jazz is far more insidious and harmful. Smooth jazz has an opiate effect that makes people imagine they are standing under tropical waterfalls or feeding cookies to deer.

“‘Mellow Music of the Spheres,’ feh! More like banal tripe for people too meek for real jazz and too stupid for classical music. Smooth jazz is played in the elevators of giant corporations to keep the drones complacent. It is even the soundtrack of the porn industry! Around the world, the most impressive boudoir acrobatics are being performed to the warbles of an off-key tenor sax and the kerplunk of a drum machine.”

Here, I thought I might appeal to any religious nuts on the jury. “I believe the Lord handed us a pristine world, and we, like paper wasps, masticated it into a modern-day Babylon of concrete, non-biodegradable plastics, and smooth jazz. The radio station KYEZ, like the drug dealer on the corner, is keeping the good people of Seattle dull-eyed and slack-jawed. Please avenge my brother’s death and stamp out this blight on the Great American Dream.”

I was laughed out of court. You haven’t felt low until your family honor is beaten down by a musical genre.
It was then and there I decided to focus on one man: Yanni.

I became the point man in the war against that smarmy, unshaven keyboard player. I began my duties by repeatedly calling his publicist down in Los Angeles and making fart noises, asking for “Yonic.” Sophomoric, sure, but it felt good to finally put a face on my anger, on my sorrow for Randy’s misguided FM listening habits.

I tried soliciting funds for my crusade. Relatives and people at work were generally unsupportive. Only my lesbian friends, Joyce and Darla, pitched in. We made posters and brainstormed slogans and T-shirts among the bruised fruit in the co-op where they worked. They were teeming with suggestions, and I felt renewed strength in the cause knowing that the GLBT community supported me.

I picketed Yanni’s palatial house on Lake Washington with signs reading “A Whale Is Not An Instrument!” and “Hitler Liked Smooth Jazz.” Although disappointed that the neighbors didn’t rally behind these placards, I persisted for five drizzle-filled days until informed that the house was empty. Clever Yanni was on tour.

When Yanni returned, pulling into his driveway one overcast Tuesday afternoon in a sleek white SUV, I was ready. I watched as he and his muse, silver-haired TV beauty Linda Evans, went inside. After several hours they reappeared. I followed as they drove back across the 520 bridge into downtown to the Genial Asparagus, a vegetarian restaurant at which they obviously intended to dine. It was getting dark, and the rain shone on First Street like a closely trimmed mustache, or a black snake that squeezes the world in its soul-crushing coils.

I followed them inside, pausing in the foyer while Yanni and Linda took a table in the back. From my vantage point behind a hanging fern I could see the entire restaurant. The stucco walls were covered with macramé and plants; the clientele all snotty types affecting a bohemian air by eating tofu and wearing North Face windbreakers. They were all gibbering gaily with seaweed and barley stuck in their teeth.

Yanni and Linda Evans signed a couple of autographs and then concentrated on their menus. A cold feeling of destiny pounded through my body. I reached into my duffel bag and prepared for the final confrontation.

I had dressed a blow-up sex doll in my brother’s clothes, complete with Mariners baseball cap, tennis shoes, and gloves. Then I had glued a picture of his face to a Donald Trump Halloween mask, which I strapped onto the doll’s plastic, lamprey-like head. Although the arms and legs flapped at the ends, the posture and complexion were pure Randy.
Under the shirt of this effigy I had taped a cassette recorder. I pressed the play button and the poignant strains of “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” the Neil Diamond version, wafted out.

I broke past the startled maître d’, and, holding the homage above my head, ran toward my nemesis. People screamed, Neil Diamond sang, and Randy flew like some avenging angel out of the Old Testament.

Then the unexpected happened. Yanni kicked my ass. He’s a hot-tempered fellow, and I hadn’t even started to recite my Smooth Jazz Manifesto when he lunged forward and started to pummel me about the face and neck. I went down hard. Linda Evans and some of the waitstaff kicked me in the small of the back and Yanni yelled, “You want a piece of Yanni?” or something like that, while he performed a vicious flying elbow drop on my neck.

I barely made it out of the Genial Asparagus with my life. I jumped in my car and floored it. Randy was losing air fast and I was bleeding and calling my lesbian friends Joyce and Darla from my cellphone when I jumped the curb, hit a telephone pole, and crashed into this Starbucks.

And then you found me, officer. Now you are looking at a man who has failed in all his best efforts, who battled evil and lost, whose belief system has foundered and collapsed in front of his very eyes.

How can you stand there and tell me that Yanni is New Age, not smooth jazz?