Back in the 1980's, a guy with just the name Gallagher began his career. One thing you can say about Gallagher up front is that his stage is always a mess. Every comedian needs a hook and his was an enormous wooden sledgehammer! 

Taking off on the old “Vegamatic” and other late-night kitchen gadget collection of commercials, he began showing people how easy it is to make “pound” cakes.

He is most famous for smashing watermelons, pineapples, and cantelopes for an easy to make fruit salad  — all to the delight of his cowering fans in the front row who, out of necessity, began wearing raincoats and bringing plastic sheeting to his concerts to protect themselves during his grand finales. 

Later he began adding other props, like giant furniture, motorized fussing babies, an adult sized big wheel, roller-skates, a zip up jacket made to look like he had enormous muscles, his "Apple" computer, and a wig attached to the back of his ever-present hat to show off and/or hide his balding head.

He expanded into humor about parenthood, politics, and whatever controversies happened to be prevalent at the time. He recently released his amassed collection of concerts on a four-disk set and I’ll tell you sincerely it’s well worth buying and watching over and over again.

What follows is my review of each individual concert. This began as a review from an avid fan, but now I’m just shaking my head. Gallagher started out as the typical entertainingly smart-ass “pot head” that was mildly funny. Then he became the best there was, laughing at himself and with everyone else and it was fun for all. Then he had a heart attack and shaved his head and it wasn’t funny anymore, or even fun.

What’s presented here (though not in chronological order for reasons only the producers seem to understand) is the full spectrum of his work. Here are a few handy hints for watching the shows:

*If he starts singing, hit the fast-forward. The songs are cute but dumb and he eventually figures that out and stops using them in his concerts.
*If he’s on roller-skates during the concert; it’s a good one.
*Avoid anything where he’s wearing a huge wireless mic on a necklace — he’s old and bitter and seldomly funny.

The best hands-down concert in the whole series and what makes this set worth buying at any price is “The Maddest” followed closely behind by “Overboard” and “The Bookkeeper.” 

Disc 1
MAD AS HELL - He was just “getting his act together” for this one and, while his comedy was great, there are some places I’d skip over, like the songs at the beginning, the end, and the overly-long, not really funny and very dated “save the whale” poem which he uses to close his show.  But he proved that he could get his audience going and keep them laughing. The biggest disappointment was he hadn’t invented the “Sledge-o-Matic” yet.