The Musical Box

robert plant and alison krauss won a total of five grammy awards last night. photo by robyn beck/getty images.

Last night’s Grammy Awards telecast was loaded with inspired, unlikely and downright odd performances that made the ceremony immensely - and, unusually - watchable.

I mean, it certainly wasn’t for the awards.  After all, Grammys for jazz, blues, classical, folk and any off-the-commercial-radar categories weren’t even acknowledged, much less announced. And as there were no surprises like last year’s Herbie Hancock upset - and, frankly, no nominations insightful enough to even set up one - we will devote our Grammy scrapbook solely to last night’s performances. Among the highlights:

+ U2’s declaration that “the future needs a big kiss” as it tore into the new Vertigo-like single Get On Your Boots. A great start, even though the song is on an album that won’t be released for another month.

+ Al Green singing Let’s Stay Together with Justin Timberlake to see who had more bravado in their falsetto. The Rev won.

+ Katy Perry’s purposely over the top performance of I Kissed a Girl. Homemade “My Grammy Moment” videos sent in to accompany the singer were upstaged by her entrance in a giant banana.

+ Radiohead’s summit with the University of Southern California Marching Band for its In Rainbows rocker 15 Step.

+ New Orleans rapper Lil Wayne shoving hip hop posturing aside for a street parade affirmation of his still-hurting homeland that also featured Allen Toussaint, Terence Blanchard and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band.

+ Robert Plant, Alison Krauss and T Bone Burnett performing the ghostly reverb meditation Rich Woman side-by-side with their Americana remake of the Everly Brothers hit Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On).

+ A ragged but heartfelt cross generational medley of Four Tops hits featuring Jamie Foxx, Ne-Yo, Smokey Robinson, and the only surviving original Top, Duke Fakir.

+ A salute to Bo Diddley from BB King, Buddy Guy, Keith Urban and John Mayer that was notable mostly because not one of the four came anywhere close to summoning the righteous Diddley guitar groove.

+ An ageless Paul McCartney singing I Saw Her Standing There with the Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl bashing merrily on drums like Animal from the Muppets. Ringo must have had a stroke if he saw this.

+ British soul-pop stylist Adele singing the regal Chasing Pavements with a legion of strings and some friendly help from the country-pop duo Sugarland.

To that, we add the show’s line-of-the-night. Courtesy of Robert Plant, came this remark on the making of Raising Sand with Alison Krauss, which won the evening’s last Grammy for Album of the Year: “It was a great way to spend a Sunday..