reposting for new followers wondering "And this is ....what?"
HARK!
I hear … a confession …
A few weeks into this thing, I should probably explain, as Steve Martin once said, “What’s the dang deal here?”
WHERE is HARK Valley? To quote another old line: “You’re soaking in it!” HV is wherever you are, if you like music, comedy, writing or other creative forms.
WHAT is HARK Valley? A “newsletter,” though not like the print-em-and-mail-em jobs of the 1950s. No, this is one of the trendy, digital formats that Facebook, in launching Bulletin, “paid homage” (cough cough) to a certain platform that rhymes with thumbtack. Unlike many of the “big timers,” your humble little HARK Valley startup is free: click the subscribe button somewhere on this page, enter your email address, then go to your email, click confirm and you’re on your way! Then the fun begins, and you get to dig around in your email to see which folder (Promotion? Social? Spam? what-was-I-thinking?) this two-or-so times per week newsletter is emailed. Or just follow facebook.com/harkvalley and my insipid -- strikethrough -- insightful writing will show up there.
So, you see, HARK Valley is Facebook … but it isn’t Facebook. I like to think of Bulletin (which has some really good writers, I had to stop reading Andrea Bruce’s “The Crossing” https://downinthecounty.bulletin.com/1817360278472093 because I was getting too jealous, check it out the whole list of Bulletiners, from a few superstars to dregs like me at https://www.bulletin.com/browse)
WHY is HARK Valley? Because, quite simply, Facebook is paying me to do this. Though every once in a while I get bored and wander off into social services, I’ve been doing journalism for 30-some years -- and I’m very talented! Seriously, my greatest talent is to get people to pay me for my mediocre-to-fair writing skills.
To double back and totally contradict a point I made earlier, HARK Valley will be focused around Phoenix, where I hope to beam digital light on some talented musicians/writers/comics etc.
For what it’s worth, here are some highlights from my journalism “career,” which started in Pittsburgh, picked up steam in San Francisco, pooped out in L.A., revived in Seattle and landed like a cow pie in Mesa:
-As a lowly high school sports stringer sneered at by the other “real reporters,” getting encouraging words from John Clayton, then the Steelers beat writer for the Pittsburgh Press (RIP).
-Going to many John Lee Hooker shows around San Fran - and even hanging out at his house (long story) in Redwood City.
-While covering the San Francisco comedy scene, seeing shows by and hanging with (he used to make fun of my shoes, and laugh his ass off -- greatest laugh ever even if he was laughing at me) the brilliant, sadly unappreciated Warren Thomas, who died way too young.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA21jFm1xR8
-After I asked him some stupid question about gangster rap, having Snoop Dogg hang up on me -- can’t remember if it was before or after I covered his murder trial (he skated, like the dog he was named after in “A Charlie Brown Christmas”).
-The crazy-good post-grunge Seattle scene. Before-they-were-big shows and interviews with Brandi Carlile, Modest Mouse and Death Cab, Fleet Foxes and Band of Horses when they were total unknowns...and so many great talents that never made it: 764-HERO, Juno, Mike Johnson, IQU, Willow, Dead Science, Bre Loughlin/Daylight Basement, Jenn Ghetto/S, Kinski, The Lights and many others I wept over in my last column https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/nightlife-reporter-tom-scanlon-writes-his-last-column/
In just a few weeks of HARK Valley, I’ve already stumbled on some worthy-of-Seattle talents: The Darts, poet Austin Davis, The Senators and E Alo ….
Got some talent you’d like to know more about -- or an unappreciated-talent who needs some pub? Drop a comment or email harkvalley@gmail.com.