LARRY GALLAGHER: Can I Go Now?

Larry Gallagher

Can I Go Now?

© 2006 Larry Gallagher (619981204927)

CD IN STOCK. ORDER NOW. Will ship immediately.

SPECIAL: 10% discount if you buy more than one copy of it today!

(About MP3 downloads at CD Baby)

[NOTE: there is another, COMPLETELY DIFFERENT Larry Gallagher selling his CDs here. This Larry's other album is An Endless Chain of Accidents.]These are deadly smart, beautiful songs by a truly gifted songwriter. Listen.

tracks

1 TV Is Your Friend
2 It's Only Life
3 I'm Deep
4 Try Not to Think about Bugs
5 Little Martian Girl
6 I Am Better than Your God
7 Fuck This Noise
8 Me and William Shakespeare
9 Tired of Me
10 You'd Look So Good in Clothes
11 Horny Teen Sluts
12 What Kind of Fool Are You?
13 I'm Sorry for What My People Did to Your People

notes

FROM THE WEBSITE:

About Larry (by Rob Riddell, friend and sideman)

(PLEASE NOTE: There is another Larry Gallagher, whose many albums you will find on CDBaby. He bears no relation to this one.)

Larry was born in Ossining, NY in the 1960s, too early to be a Backstreet Boy, and just in time to catch the scent left in the air by the sexual revolution. Undaunted, he took up the saxophone. In high school he played in jazz bands and started composing songs of his own, none of which he can be forced to play at present. Some songs from the Columbian era (ca. 1981-1985) have survived, and they testify to an already-developed satirical sensibility. For at some point, who the hell knows exactly when, he realized he was a funny dude. This is pure speculation here, but I'm guessing that this was a double revelation: his lightning wit and mordant sense of absurdity were both a desperate defense against a cruel, uncaring world, and a pretty good way of getting chicks. Stir in an unusual sensitivity to language and tireless energy, sprinkle liberally with existential doubt, set oven on "The Reagan Years," and you have the makings of an artist.

While he was always doing something musical, such as playing with and writing horn charts for Joey Cheezhee and the Velveeta Underground in the late 80s, Larry had a wide-ranging and successful career as a magazine journalist. His best gig, at least that I've heard of, was as a staff writer for Details Magazine, back when it was cool: three or four times a year he would go off for a month or two to work some crazy job and then write about it. The cover photo of Larry's first album, "An Endless Chain of Accidents," captures Larry when he labored under the Golden Arches (where he reluctantly turned down a promotion); he also manned a fishing boat off Alaska and gutted cows for a meat-packing company. He wrote for Esquire, the New York Times Magazine, and a bunch of others - about the rock scene in LA, yoga in India, and smoking psychedelic toad sweat. A pretty nice match for such a peripatetic and edgy intellect. But not enough, apparently.

In 1996, Larry tossed it all, shaved his head, and joined a Zen Buddhist monastery on a mountaintop just outside of L.A. He stayed for nearly three years, living as a monk, complete with robes and begging bowl. (One of his fellow meditators was Leonard Cohen.) He has jested that all he got out of this experience was a (wise and lovely) wife and his song "I'm Deep (Will You Sleep with Me?)." But I would add something else: a hairstyle. Haha, that was a joke. Fallen monkhood is really too complex a subject to go into here. But it's clear to me and most of his friends that Larry's exploration of the limits of consciousness and discipline has distinctively deepened his outlook and his art. Certainly the songs he's written these last few years have been as touching and masterful as anything he'd done before.

Since '99, Larry's been living in San Francisco, making ends meet with carpentry and writing. We're now grooming him for impending stardom, but meantime he's still engaged in his myriad passions - including gardening, cooking, reed-organ restoration, fixing everything, and through and above it all, music.

Just underneath that self-deprecating exterior is an amazingly versatile and eclectic musician. His formal training is limited to saxophone in highschool and, recently, classical flute, but Larry's one of the most tasteful and nimble guitarists I've come across. He plays, with equal authority, Fats Waller, Richard Thompson, and James Taylor. In fact, his friends often have trouble finding a song that Larry doesn't know. But it's really his expressive, vulnerable voice and poetic precision that set Larry apart. I've seen him bring a roomful of people to their knees with laughter, and minutes later hold them spellbound with a sad and tender love song.

Along with all of Larry's friends, I've always been rather irked that his music wasn't as well-known as, say, that of Richard Thompson or Tom Lehrer or Lyle Lovett. He belongs up there with those guys! It's perfectly clear that there is no justice in the world.

For me (if we can finally talk about me for a moment?), it has been a rare privilege to befriend and play music with Larry. His honesty, artistry, and courage are, I think, an inspiration to anyone who comes to know him. And after some consideration, I think I've come up with the best thing I can say about his songs: they are so _Larry_.

reviews

Please log in to review this album.

  • Another indispensable Larry Gallagher album.
    author: B.E.

    This adventurous bunch of songs ranges from razor-sharp, cheap-shot-free satire to heartbreakingly personal, dark night of the soul revelation. Gallagher brings a Chaplinesque intelligence to everything he touches, along with a highly evolved knowledge of music, a great sense of humor, and a voice that's both honest and beautiful. My favorites: "Try Not to Think About Bugs" is a masterpiece in the Edward Gorey tradition of scary bedtime lore, and "What Kind of Fool Are You" plays like some freshly unearthed Cole Porter standard.

  • This record is nothing short of brilliant
    author: Vytas

    This is some of the most amazing songwriting and arranging that I've ever heard. The varied instrumentation ornament the songs with such taste and genius, each is like a musical short story that you can't put down until you're finished. My favorite songs are "Try not to think about Bugs", and "Sorry for what my people did to you". This album, like all the music I've heard from Larry Gallagher, has the unique quality of having brilliant lyrics accompanied by equally brilliant musical ideas and performances. It's a slam dunk, leaving nothing to be desired, in short it's a masterpiece.

  • Very entertaining disc! Highly recommended...
    author: Symon

    I love this record even more than Larry's first album, probably because I find the lyrics are even more fun than before. "You'd Look So Good In Clothes" and "Me and Wiliam Shakespeare" are worth the price of the album itself, in my opinion. Since I am used to hearing these dittys performed as solo pieces with the famous "INCREDIBLE SUCTION POWER!" acoustic guitar, it's always a treat to hear what this guy has done with the arrangements. I'm definitely getting some for Christmas gifts (my sister is an accomplished trumpet player in Philly and I know she'll really dig this stuff). -->S.

email

Please log in to email this artist.