Yeah, I’ll admit it. I’m a Radiohead fan. 

We’re a devoted lot, and because of that, we’re pigeon-holed, stereotyped, etc. But everybody should have that one band they love, right? And because “The Bends” came out when I was in high school, Radiohead was that band for me.

I actually liked the later stuff better — “Hail to the Thief” is my favorite album, the peak before the band’s lesser works of recent years. But even better than the recordings were the live shows. Somehow, here was a group of musicians that was doing stadium rock without the Aquanet and tights.

A Radiohead live performance was truly odd and yet still had mass appeal. But I saw guitarist Jonny Greenwood do something in the early 2000s that really blew my mind. It gave me a new understanding of both improvisation and the art of making every performance unique. 

Greenwood pulled out a radio at the beginning of the song “National Anthem” and just started madly switching channels. Static spat, voices barked, music played over his brother Colin Greenwood’s driving bassline — it was awesome. And the beauty of it was that every time he pulled the move it was different.

In Germany, it was German radio. In Japan, the voices chirped in Japanese. Here’s an example. 

Jonny Greenwood’s move was part of the inspiration for this week’s Marketplace Tech series Playing With Machines. Musicians are great ambassadors and early adopters of technology. Unless you’re a staunch classicalist or a virtuoso on an acoustic instrument, you’re always trying to figure out ways to make new sounds or bring forth new ideas.

That can mean picking up an instrument you don’t understand, or trying to push an instrument you know to the limit for a surprising result. It can mean something as simple as playing to a metrinome, or something as complex as composing music for a robot guitarist with 78 fingers.

Like most artists, good musicians are a wonderful mix of technical ability and whimsy. So the way they think about and interact with technology is a treat to witness. 

Listen to a Spotify playlist built by Ben Johnson featuring artists from our Playing With Machines series, and others: