Massively genius.

On Sunday I took Charming Girlfriend to see Massive Attack at the Hollywood Bowl. The opening band sucked (really – who let them onstage?) but Massive Attack put on a brilliant show, even though one of the frontmen was away on paternity leave. They played most of my favorite songs and rawked the Bowl as it has never been rawked.

At one point they introduced an unbilled guest artist with, simply, “Her name is Elizabeth,” and out drifted Elizabeth Fraser, in a Yohji Yamamoto-like muumuu. “Elizabeth Fraser!” I squawked to Fetching Girlfriend. A legend in her own time, the doyenne of a hundred bands that modeled their sound on the Cocteau Twins. I thought back to my college days in Paris, endlessly riding the Métro and walking the streets with my (pre-iPod) Walkman’s headphones blasting the Cocteau Twins into my eardrums, my inner landscape profoundly coloring the outer one.

The only possible improvement to Sunday’s show would have been a guest appearance by Tracey Thorn, singing her songs from Protection. It was the best concert I’ve seen in LA since Dead Can Dance last year, also at the Bowl (though Hilary Hahn playing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, an entirely different kind of genius, deserves special mention).