I was treated to one of the most bizarre spectacles in music history tonight: What turned out to be a two-year-old Coldplay performance on Austin City Limits.

The band did their normal numbers, a Johnny Cash-inspired song and then a "Ring of Fire" cover. Michael Stipe from REM showed up too, looking as gaunt and stylish as ever, as if Kate Moss went through chemo and rubbed sandpaper on her face. What stood out and repulsed me repeatedly was Chris Martin's dancing.

It's easy to forget that Coldplay's frontman got famous by walking on a beach in the rain, swaddled in a windbreaker, in the video for "Yellow." He donned a nearly-shaved head and perma-stubble (a regular feature of my face) for the band's followup, and it stayed for a long time. Now I'm not the most savvy observer of pop culture, listening to little else than public, jazz and indie rock radio, but Chris Martin's hair had never been so shaggy that I remembered - Kenny Loggins and early-80s Bono came to mind. My guess is he was going for the latter.

Bad hair I can forgive - mocking epileptics I cannot. Chris Martin had no shame on that stage, contorting his figure in ways devised by Lucifer in the aftermath of his fall from heaven and loosed on the earth in December 2005. At one point he started making what appeared to be sign language for retarded people, without a hint of self-consciousness. He hopped around stage on one foot, doing something akin to jazz hands. He dry-humped the piano during "Clocks," rocking the bench so hard you hoped he'd fall on his ass and paralyze his spine. Michael Stipe has rhythm, as displayed in the video for "Losing My Religion." Chris Martin has random bursts of endorphins. Thankfully I can't remember several other jaw-droppingly embarrassing moves he foisted upon the record-breaking audience that night (see link at the top). And yet no one seemed to care.

Well, I did. I've long enjoyed Coldplay in a sort of they're-pretty-good-for-pop way, a band that I would more strongly consider buying than nearly any other, except that everyone else was buying it, so that wouldn't make me different. Chris Martin's YouTube-worthy bad dancing has ensured I'll never give them a second thought.