Skunk Streak

While I certainly respect her skills with a guitar, Bonnie Raitt's songs have never really given me "something to talk about." Her hair, however, is a different story. A sparkling red mane accented by a streak of gray, Raitt's mop has long sported a color scheme found more often on football jerseys than in nature. If we're to assume that the Crash Test Dummies theory of shock-induced color change holds true, than it seems Ms. Raitt may have been in some sort of accident sometime in the 1980s, the nature of which we can only speculate upon (aided, of course, by the back cover of my mother's worn vinyl copy of No Nukes). Was it a drunken fall after a night of wine tasting on Jackson Browne's sailboat? A run-in with a grumpy rattlesnake on James Taylor's ranch? Or maybe, just maybe, after hearing the Doobie Brothers sing "Takin' It to the Streets" one too many times, she just couldn't take it anymore and hopped in the back of David Crosby's VW bus, begging him to drive her to Mexico in search of mescaline and the meaning of life. The well-coiffed Bonnie Raitt performs 8 p.m. Saturday at the Nokia Theatre. Tickets are $45 to $76.50. Visit ticketmaster.com.
Sat., Sept. 23