Paul Simon's "Getting Ready For Christmas Day" -- from So Beautiful or So What, one of my top albums of 2011 -- takes on special meaning this time of year, for obvious reasons. But it's also worth nothing that, thankfully, his "nephew" should be enjoying turkey dinner home with his family this year.

I got a nephew in Iraq
It's his third time back
But it's ending up the way it began

With the luck of a beginner
He'll be eating Turkey dinner
On some mountain top in Pakistan

Getting ready
Oh, we're getting ready
For the power and the glory and the story of Christmas Day

Aurelio

​"People don't necessarily think of Bob Marley as a world-music artist, they just think of him as a great artist. That's how I think of Aurelio."

That's KEXP DJ Jon Kertzer, who also runs Sub Pop's "world-music" imprint, Next Ambiance, the label behind Aurelio's album Laru Beya, featured in this week's paper. Kertzer rightly bristles at the tag "world music" in relation to this Honduran artist. "World music" says nothing about Aurelio's music, other than that it's not jazz or rock and roll or rap. But that's almost the point.

Genre tags are imperfect crutches, but they're very useful crutches.

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Leave aside for a moment that the band Bad Company was a supergroup consisting of members of Mott the Hoople and King Crimson, the fact is that like a lot of acts from the pre-video age, they didn't look as "bad" as they sounded.

They don't look like bad company, they seem like nice fellows.

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... to our beloved music intern, Pauline Diaz, whose last day is today. We'll miss her, but at least we won't have to shake out her backpack to find the new Arcade Fire CD anymore.

Even Simon loved Danelle Hayes.

​Danelle Hayes had one of the most moving auditions for the ninth season of American Idol. The 24-year-old Seattleite - who traveled to Denver for the tryout - told the judges she hosted a live karaoke night and sang in a cover band back home, which prompted Simon to ask, "Do you hate it?" Hayes started crying.

She then delivered a kick ass rendition of Melissa Etheridge's "I'm the Only One" that impressed the judges so much they unanimously voted to send her to Hollywood.

"I don't know what's gone on in your life, but you're almost broken," Simon told her. "Well, you may have come in here just in time to rescue you from corporate hell."

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