It’s not like you’d ever get the impression White is holding back a little in Tulsa, but maybe it doesn’t hurt to have a side-stage contingent like that if you’re hoping to get a 55-minute encore. White did shout out some other names over the course of the set - one number was dedicated to “Lars and Jessica” (Ulrich, that is, presumably), and others name-checked as in the house included Tom Morello, Josh Homme, Jack Black, Conan O’Brien and two Cats - Cat Power and Doja Cat. Friday’s show had Olivia Jean, who played on the first night of his “Supply Chain Issues” tour last April and married him that same evening, returning for opening duties for this, one of the tour’s postscript gigs. Naturally, he put in an addendum about how everyone there was F&F for the night, but it can put a little spring in a rocker’s step when the guest list is full of folks they actually know and want to impress. What the audience was getting at the Belasco show - announced just barely a week ahead of time - amounted to a “friends and family” gig, with White actually invoking that phrase as the concert drew to an extended close. Because you’ve either got a little Elvis in you or you don’t. White has that Jimi Hendrix energy, but Hendrix as filtered through Memphis’ own brand of swagger. But it’s also in his impromptu squeals - vocally or on the guitar - and in the way he dances backward in white bucks while peeling off something that could peel wallpaper. It’s in the moments you see him calling audibles with three of the better sidemen on the planet, and it’s definitely in his extended solos. It’s not purely unpredictability that can make a person want to pull up stakes and follow White around for a few shows (or at least just stream or download a bunch of them on ). But the worst jam band in the world can mix it up every night without having much to show for spontaneity alone. The fact that he doesn’t start any concert with a fully plotted out setlist (as pointed out by his DJ/hype right before the band comes on each night) is like catnip in cultivating the affection of the contingent of fans that believes there’s latent value in each performance having its own personality. No one in rock ‘n’ roll puts on more consistently thrilling shows nowadays, and there’s probably a show-biz “trick” or two in that. “What’s the trick,” Jack White asks, in one of his most-played recent songs, “in making my love stick?” That’s a good rhetorical question, to which anyone who’s seen him in concert lately can provide plenty of tangible answers - all of them there for the grasping during a breathtakingly good, long set Friday night at downtown L.A.’s intimate Belasco Theatre.
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