Radiohead and MTV EXIT (End Exploitation and Trafficking) have won their 16th award for their “All I Need” video, which depicts, as Thom Yorke said last year, “two parallel stories running, one of a little boy in the West and one of a little boy in a sweatshop in the East, and the boy [in the West] ends up buying the shoes from the sweatshop.”

Their latest accolade, the Asia-Pacific Child Rights Award, is given out annually to the “best television programme on children’s rights produced in the Asia-Pacific region.” MTV’s Simon Goff states in the press release: “The International reception of the video has been truly overwhelming and we hope that it has inspired people to get invovled and join the fight against modern-day slavery.”

It wasn’t until Peter Gabriel abruptly canceled his scheduled Academy Awards performance (after they demanded he cut his song down to 65 seconds earlier this year) that I realized what an awesome artist he truly is. Late to the party, I know, but it looks like he’s going to start getting respect all over very shortly. The tracklist to his upcoming album of orchestral cover songs was leaked by the distributor in Japan and it’s a doozy.

All we knew before today was what collaborator John Metcalfe had teased on Gabriel’s official site: that Scratch My Back (due out early next year) consisted of “song swap[s] with some of the world’s most legendary artists.”

Does that mean that Arcade Fire, Radiohead, Neil Young, Lou Reed, Bowie and more will be covering Gabriel’s songs in return? We can’t confirm that, but here’s the tracklist, which Metcalfe refused to confirm or deny to the Guardian. All he would say is that “there are some very, very famous singers and bands involved,” and “there should be something in there for everybody.”

Yes, indeed (via Barks via Guardian):

Thom Yorke’s recent candid talk with The Believer spawned, as we predicted, a handful of controversies in the blogosphere. Most notably, Yorke’s ranting on his hatred of CDs, hatred of websites (I hate!), and comment that “none of us want to get into that creative hoo-ha of a long-play record again,” fueled copious “Radiohead Done Making Albums?!” headlines. While Thom Yorke is busy getting funky with Flea & friends in LA, NME’s weekly print magazine caught up with Radiohead guitarist (and Lily Allen apologist) Ed O’Brien for some good ol’ rumor squashing.

“We were misquoted,” O’Brien told NME (not yet available online). “We will be making an album!” Thom Yorke may be “happy to see the CD format disappear” because they’re “just a fucking nightmare,” but he clearly doesn’t speak for the band on that subject:

“We all like vinyl,” O’Brien added. “That’s not going to go away. I still like CDs as well. I got the Speech Debelle CD the other day—I nearly downloaded it from iTunes, but I thought, ‘No, I want the physical thing.’”

Now it all makes sense that Yorke announced at the final supergroup gig in LA, “We’re going to do this again next year some time,” as O’Brien added that Radiohead are heading into the studio this winter in Oxfordshire, England. Thom’s going home for Christmas, it seems, and Radiohead have at least one more jewel case present to wrap.

I toyed with the idea of putting the word “supergroup” in the title, but I’ll hold off on that. Let’s just call them “friends.” Very, very famous friends. Flea, Nigel Godrich, Joey Waronker, and Mauro Refosco will join Thom Yorke for two concerts at LA’s Orpheum theater in less than a week. Yorke made the announcement on Dead Air just moments ago (via CoS):

hi
in the past couple of weeks i’ve been getting a band together for fun to play the eraser stuff live and the new songs etc.. to see if it could work!
here’s a photo.. its me, joey waronker, mauro refosco, flea and nigel godrich.

at the beginning of october the 4th and 5th we are going to do a couple of shows at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles.
we don’t really have a name and the set will not be very long cuz ..well …we haven’t got that much material yet!
but come and check it out if you are in the area. we’ve also got locals Lucky Dragons playing.
all the best

Do you have a credit card handy? Buy tickets for the shows today at 7AM EST here or here. Yorke & friends may just be dipping their toes in the supergroup waters, but they do have a promo pic (see above) already.

Oh Thom, I knew there was a reason you’ve been dressing for the second coming.

Now that he’s facing formidable opposition from Sir Elton John and Captain James Blunt, Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien has finally spoken out about the pseudo showdown between the Featured Artists Coalition and Lily Allen’s “It’s Not Alright” blog (which has been either hacked or mysteriously deleted by Allen in the past 12 hours).

“I completely agree with Lily Allen,” O’Brien told BBC World Service (via NME). “We’re [Radiohead] certainly not going to suffer. A lot of people have downloaded our music for free, but ultimately we don’t suffer as much as a small band.”

O’Brien maintained his stance that the government should not be allowed to disconnect alleged illegal file-sharers, but insisted that what he and “people like Lily Allen are saying” to music pirates is: “Listen, if you want a great vibrant music scene and your favorite bands to be able to carry on doing it, you have a responsibility to pay for some of the work that they’ve produced.”

Sounds like a bit of damage control to me, but it’s still nice to see these two finally agreeing on something. Teaching the public responsibility could be an impossible task, though. Trent Reznor learned that the hard way.

We’ve been going on and on about Thom Yorke’s upcoming 12”/digital release, so it would be a crime to not alert our readers at the very second an audio stream has become available online.

Do yourselves a favor, wipe those Dylan Christmas album samples from your memory, and check out the Radiohead front man’s new jams here or here or embedded below (via Stereogum):

“Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses”

“The Hollow Earth”

There’s just something about that pesky Radiohead pay-what-you-want scheme that gets under Trent Reznor’s skin. I think it’s the fact that he basically tried it with Saul Williams’ The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!, and it failed to work for a lesser-known artist. Either way, he dissed the Radiohead model once, then posted a rant about it on his site, and now it’s come up in yet another interview.

“At the end of the day, when you saw what [Radiohead] did in terms of them signing with a record label and selling a record, it felt like a step backward, and it felt like it was just more of a stunt than any kind of real formula for people to survive in the same era,” Reznor told the A.V. Club.

“The thing that I learned from Radiohead is, I don’t want to ask you what you think it’s worth. ‘Hey, I just worked a year on this thing.’ ‘Well, that’s worth 10 cents.’ ‘Hey, fuck you!’”

Not long ago, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood were joined by the USC Marching Band for a performance of In Rainbows opener “15 Step” at the Grammy Awards. And it was awesome. Well, the USC band, which has collaborated with Andre 3000 and performed other unlikely covers for unsuspecting football stadium crowds, unveiled a revamped medley of “15 Step” last week, complete with Yorke’s vocal freak out melodies, and a killer intro/outro of (personal favorite Radiohead track) OK Computer’s “Paranoid Android,” complete with “rain down on me” breakdown and Jonny Greenwood’s guitar freak out.

Watch the USC Marching Band’s home opener Radiohead medley below: