A Defense of Gallagher

In the company of friends the other evening, I happened to mention my desire to sit in the front row of a Gallagher show and be one of those happy few holding up umbrellas and plastic sheets to shield myself from the rain of fruit and vegetable matter. My initial excuse that my enjoyment was ironic wasn't well received. I guess they've had enough of charlatans trying to sell bad entertainment by dressing it up with classy terms like "spectacle" and "carnivalesque." And they're right, so screw the irony, it's time someone gave Gallagher the credit he's due. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the reason people rank Gallagher at the ass-end of the comic scale is that he can come across as a one-trick pony. If you've watched one piece of fruit get smashed by the "sledge-o-matic" you've seen them all, right? Wrong. Because every great art-form began as a crude invention. Take the piano for example. Someone somewhere must have plucked that first taught string and felt themselves stirred by the noise it made. And for awhile after that, probably plucked it again and again to the annoyance of anyone around. But little did these early critics know that the beautiful art of the piano had been born. With Gallagher, we are witness to something much the same. Ever since a smile passed across the lips of little Gallagher as he smashed that first berry with the palm of his hand, his art has evolved. To date, he has done 16 shows featuring the "sledge-o-matic" each with its own variation on the theme of food-bashing, nuances and subtleties like does the big-mac come before the cottage cheese or after? These are the choices that can alter the entire tenor of a show, every bursting object the equivalent of a delicately pressed piano key. Such mastery of form is not the work of a one-trick pony wielding an over-sized mallet but a musician fine-tuning his instrument.