Pitchfork.tv kicks off with a bang on Monday with an exclusive Radiohead performance. The Pitchfork people have to be stoked.

It’s the final countdown. Monday, April 7 sees the much anticipated launch of Pitchfork.tv, Pitchfork’s rebuttal to the age-old complaint, “There’s nothing on.” Launching with hours of on-demand music content by the artists we love, we should recall two important facts about April 7. The day marks the birth date of Francis Ford Coppola and the end of prohibition. A day destined for the launch of a new way to view music and indie films and worthy of a toast, so grab some bubbly and hook up the speakers.

Earlier this week we gave you a rough idea of what you can expect to find at Pitchfork.tv, and we’ve got even more goodies up our sleeves. Today, we’re overcome with happiness to announce that Radiohead– yes, Radiohead– will be joining the new site’s Monday lineup with a special performance of In Rainbows [CD2] banger “Bangers & Mash,” which the band recorded exclusively for the launch of Pitchfork.tv. Shot on Wednesday (as in two days ago!) in Nigel Godrich’s basement studio, this utterly kick-ass performance will serve as the site’s first-ever music video.

King of crazy Charles Manson released a new record this week via the opensource copyright organization Creative Commons just like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails. What’s Creative Commons? Well…

Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from “All Rights Reserved” to “Some Rights Reserved.”

You can download it here I’m sure it’s less than awesome.

In other news somewhat related to both crazy and Manson Lindsay Lohan will star in an upcoming movie about Charles Manson aptly titled Manson Girls. She will play Nancy Pitman, one of Manson’s cult followers/whores in the movie. She’ll also be getting naked in front of the camera (again).

Like Nine Inch Nails before them, Radiohead are making the individual tracks to their new single “Nude” available on iTunes for use in crafting homemade remixes. However, the one caveat to this seemingly fan-appreciative jesture is that the “stems”, or individual components, for each song have to purchased separately. That sound you just heard was Thom Yorke’s bank account getting stacked with loot:

Radiohead, iTunes and Garageband are giving fans the opportunity to remix the band’s new single “Nude” at http://www.radioheadremix.com

To make remixing easy, the separate ’stems’* from the song will be available to purchase from iTunes. The ’stems’ available are bass, voice, guitar, strings/fx and drums. Fans can mix them in any way they like, either by adding their own beats and instrumentation, or just remixing the original parts.

Fans who purchase all five ’stems’ from iTunes during the first week they’re available, will be sent an access code to a GarageBand file ready to open in GarageBand or Logic. However, you don’t need GarageBand to do a remix, all the stems are available in iTunes Plus and compatible with several music software platforms.

Finished mixes can be uploaded to http://www.radioheadremix.com where the public will listen and vote for their favourite remix (voting ends May 1st). Fans can also create a widget allowing votes from their own website, Facebook or MySpace page to be counted as ‘mix votes’ back on radioheadremix.com.

Sounds like a lot of work to me. I’d rather just teach my shitty band the chords to “High and Dry” and play that shit for free.

In a move that will probably be somewhat polarizing for the Radiohead crowd, experimental trash rock group Liars has been slotted as main support on select US tour dates.

Liars most recent eponymous album was released in 2007 and received accolades from The New York Times, Rolling Stone and a bunch of other publications that a lot of people read, and it even impressed the austere tastemakers over at Pitchfork. Their single “Plaster Casts of Everything” made Pitchfork’s Top 100 singles of 2007 (no. 48) and the video for which also appeared on their Top 50 videos list. And look! You can watch it right here below. If you’ve had too much coffee (or heavier mind altering substances) today, you might want to hold off. Tour dates after the jump.

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$175 3-day “Early Bird” passes are on sale now, so you better get on that shit before you’re paying a scalper with an eight ball and your 3-week old baby. After the “Early Bird” tickets are sold out, $190 “Advance” 3-Day passes go on sale…followed by Regular Old “Jacking Up The Prices For the Fuck of It” $205 tickets.

So quick, go here and SPEND early birds, SPEND. But on what, exactly?

Details haven’t really been announced, but the main speculation in the blogosphere (blech) is that Radiohead will be headlining. The date of the show is August 1st - 3rd at Grant park in Chicago, that’s for sure. Otherwise, it’s a big question mark with a bigger dollar sign attached to it. The 130-band lineup will be announced on April 7th. Talk about rolling the dice! Yes, the possibility of Radiohead headlining makes for a good pitch, and given the Lollapalooza track record there’s most likely going to be some awesome groups announced. Still, that does not leave out the possibility of Radiohead playing for an hour, and Satellite Party doing handfuls of ecstasy pills and playing the rest of the weekend…

Go Perry GO!

In a guest blog for the Guardian, perennially tortured Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke lays out his somewhat surprising feelings of optimism regarding global climate change:

These changes might be small, but they are in the right direction. Unlike pessimists such as James Lovelock, I don’t believe we are all doomed. It was good to hear Sir David King recently saying he was an optimist and human behaviour is changing. As I heard George Monbiot saying not long ago, isn’t it funny how in the space of a year we went from listening to sceptics who denied this was happening to suddenly saying we’re all doomed - how interesting that both scenarios demand that we do nothing. That can’t be right. You should never give up hope.

Thom Yorke as the voice of hope? What is the world coming to?