TV’s Most Surreal Music Performances

In honor of David Bowie's 69th birthday, we take a look back at what proved to be a thoroughly Bowie-esque performance on Johnny Carson's straightlaced 'Tonight Show.'

Not many bands can boast that the third concert they ever played was opening for Jane's Addiction, but the Smashing Pumpkins were never like many other bands.

Billed as "Three More Days of Peace, Love + Music," Woodstock '94 took all the iconic hippie mythology of the original 1969 festival in upstate New York and wrapped it up in the cynical cultural vibes of Generation X, where commerce overtakes culture as the driving force behind things like, well, gigantic music festivals.

Sure, David Letterman was probably better known known back in the '80s and early-'90s for booking unknown and sonically challenging bands than he is today.

If you happen to be the parent of a toddler and not afraid of television permanently rotting the little dude or dudette's brain -- or if you've ever spent a few hours trying to keep a rambunctious two year old entertained -- you know there are two kinds of children's television shows.

The backlash that greeted Sonic Youth when they announced plans to appear on the WB teen drama 'Gilmore Girls' was truly something to behold.

To the majority of the TV-set-owning world, she's known as the (who's that?) girl who flipped the bird during Madonna's halftime performance at Super Bowl XLVI, setting off a legal firestorm with the FCC so ridiculous you'd think she flashed her nipple on live TV in front of a billion people.

MGMT have never been an easy band to peg down.

In 1989, the Replacements made an appearance on a TV special called the 'International Rock Awards.'

When indie troubadour Elliott Smith took the stage at the 70th Academy Awards to perform two minutes and 14 seconds of his tune 'Miss Misery' back in 1998, he did so for one reason and one reason only: to fend off a threat.