Rickie Lee Jones’ brilliant new take on “Sympathy for the Devil,” featured on a forthcoming album of cover songs for Concord Records, neatly sidesteps expectations.

It would be easy enough to fill this list with songs from Chicago’s turn-of-the-1990s slickster years. And just as easy to heap scorn on their post-Terry Kath slump in the late 1970s. Instead, we did both.

Ornette Coleman used it, and so did Gerry Mulligan. And now, a quartet of Norwegians in their mid-20s is doing it, too. However Pixel, as this Nordic combo is called, isn’t making Harmolodics out of the non-chordal trumpet/sax/standup bass/drums configuration.

Everyone has played the “If you had to live without one of your senses…” thought experiment. I can never make up my mind. The link to the external world via our senses is precious