I should clarify by what I meant by listening to music for "gear" reasons. You can admire someone for coming up with an interesting chord progression, or through interesting use of technology (like Jonny's famous Max/MSP stutter patch). With Radiohead, I find much of their magic is in how they achieve such great sounds through creative use of gear. That's why I read your blog - it's a great insight into a fascinating process.

I understand what you’re saying. I just listen to music that sounds good to me. The creativity in gear can be impressive to me, but in a way entirely separate from the music itself. I generally won’t like a song any more than otherwise just because it was created in an interesting way, unless that creative process can help to illuminate part of the meaning of the piece when listening to the it, such as with Jonny’s Piano for Children or Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting in a Room. However, that does not seem to be the case at all with Radiohead. Knowing whether or not Jonny used a Mutronics Mutator for the final solo of Paranoid Android doesn’t seem to have any effect on the meaning of the song.

What you say is a perfectly legitimate part of why you might like certain music, but for me personally it just doesn’t factor into liking music. In certain specific cases, creative use of gear can help one to illuminate the piece, but it doesn’t make me enjoy how it sounds any more or less.

Perhaps I just expect interesting and/or new sounds. I don’t find them unduly noteworthy because I don’t even like anything else.