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St. Bono does St. Nick

U2 has gotten into the Yule spirit by recording Greg Lake's "I Believe in Father Christmas," replete with chiming, bell-like guitar from the Edge.

And the song is serving double duty -- it's the band's first contribution to singer Bono's new download service at redwire.com.

By offering exclusive tracks from such artists as U2, Bob Dylan, Death Cab for Cutie, Keith Urban and R.E.M., the site hopes to raise money to buy medicine for people living with HIV in Africa.

Check out a video of U2's "Father Christmas" at ilike.com/artist/U2/videos.

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Miles' tongue gets racy

In a 1968 interview, legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis claimed one of his favorite hobbies was "making fun of white folks on television." Miles went on to blast movies of that era as "a form of Jim Crow" because they didn't depict "Negroes as human beings."

In a 1980 radio interview, Miles defiantly used the N-word to describe jazz, then prodded the befuddled interviewer to agree, then proceeded to curse "the honkies in St. Louis."

That's only a few of the verbal Molotov cocktails found in the new book "Miles on Miles: Interviews and Encounters With Miles Davis," edited by Paul Maher Jr. and Michael K. Dorr.

"A constant searing theme of these pages is racism in all its insidious incarnations," the eds write in the book's introduction. That's like saying Miles could play a tune or two on trumpet.

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Rolling Stone's Top 50 of '08

Do Bob Dylan and Lil Wayne even know they share the same planet?

The rapper and the rock icon do share one thing: Each landed works in the top 10 of Rolling Stone magazine's best 50 albums of 2008 -- although neither one took home the No. 1 trophy.

See the list at rollingstone.com, where you also can see readers' posts blasting RS writers for their asinine picks.

-- Rick de Yampert
Entertainment Writer