Sly Guitar from Raitt, Cooder, Lindley at Benefit

The rare pairing of sly git-tar whizzards Ry Cooder and David Lindley provided the highlights, caustic comic Bob Goldthwait provided the punch lines and red-haired bluesrocker Bonnie Raitt provided the headliner at the benefit concert for the California Environmental Protection Initiative that sold out the Santa Monica Civic on Wednesday.

Raitt (a pretty fair sly guitarist herself) and her band breezed through a solid set of old, new, borrowed and blues tunes and the “Bobcat” spewed a blue brew of today’s political and pop-music stew, but it was the near-telepathic, multi-ethnic, musicological, multi-instrumental, ego-free playing of Cooder and Lindley that simply shot out the lights. Cajun, gospel, country, blues, cars, sex, humor, politricks, virtuosity. This one should have been a live album.