V. "Valhalla" Vale (born February 4, 1944) is an American editor,

writer A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing styles and techniques to communicate ideas. Writers produce different forms of literary art and creative writing such as novels, short stories, books, poetry, travelogues, p ...

, interviewer, musician and, as Vale Hamanaka, was keyboardist for the initial configuration of

Blue Cheer Blue Cheer was an American rock band that initially performed and recorded in the late 1960s and early 1970s and was sporadically active until 2009. Based in San Francisco, Blue Cheer played in a psychedelic blues rock or acid rock style, and ...

, before it became famous as a

power trio A power trio is a rock and roll band format having a lineup of electric guitar, bass guitar and drum kit (drums and cymbals), leaving out a second rhythm guitar or keyboard instrument that are often used in other rock music bands that are quartet ...

. He is the publisher and primary contributor to books and magazines published by his company,

RE/Search Publications RE/Search Publications is an American magazine and book publisher, based in San Francisco, founded by its editor V. Vale in 1980. In several issues, Andrea Juno was also credited as an editor. It was the successor to Vale's earlier punk rock fanz ...

. Vale is the host of the television talk show ''Counter Culture Hour'' on

Public-access television Public-access television is traditionally a form of non-commercial mass media where the general public can create content television programming which is narrowcast through cable television specialty channels. Public-access television was creat ...

cable TV Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broadc ...

channel 29 in San Francisco. The show is edited by his partner Marian Wallace. Vale is

Japanese American are Americans of Japanese ancestry. Japanese Americans were among the three largest Asian American ethnic communities during the 20th century; but, according to the 2000 census, they have declined in number to constitute the sixth largest Asi ...

Early life

Vale was born on January 30, 1944 at the

Jerome War Relocation Center The Jerome War Relocation Center was a Japanese American internment camp located in southeastern Arkansas, near the town of Jerome in the Arkansas Delta. Open from October 6, 1942, until June 30, 1944, it was the last American concentration camp ...

to actor Kiyoshi Conrad Hamanaka and Mary Takaoka of the Vaudeville group

Taka Sisters The Taka Sisters were a traveling vaudeville trio of Japanese-American singers and dancers who billed themselves as "the only Japanese triplets on the stage". Early years Myrtle (1916-2011), Midi (1914-1936), and Mary (1912-1991) were the daughte ...

(Myrtle, Mary, Midi). The Taka Sisters broke up after the murder of Vale's aunt Midi Taka in 1936. Vale has two younger half-sisters; musician/singer Lionelle Hamanaka, and children's author and illustrator

Sheila Hamanaka Sheila Hamanaka is an American freelance children's author and illustrator. Life Hamanaka is a Sansei Japanese American, the daughter of actor Conrad Yama and Mary Takaoka of the Vaudeville group Taka Sisters. She has two older siblings; the wr ...

. By 1966 Vale received a bachelor's degree in English Literature at

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

and moved to

Haight-Ashbury Haight-Ashbury () is a district of San Francisco, California, named for the intersection of Haight and Ashbury streets. It is also called The Haight and The Upper Haight. The neighborhood is known as one of the main centers of the counterculture ...

. In 1970, he moved to an apartment in North Beach, where he continues to live today.

Publishing

In 1977, while working at

City Lights Bookstore City Lights is an independent bookstore-publisher combination in San Francisco, California, that specializes in world literature, the arts, and progressive politics. It also houses the nonprofit City Lights Foundation, which publishes selected tit ...

, with $100 donated each by

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

and

Lawrence Ferlinghetti Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti (March 24, 1919 – February 22, 2021) was an American poet, painter, social activist, and co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. The author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, an ...

, he began publication of ''

Search and Destroy Search and destroy, seek and destroy, or simply S&D is a military strategy best known for its employment in the Malayan Emergency and the Vietnam War. The strategy consists of inserting ground forces into hostile territory, ''search''ing out ...

'', a

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

-based

zine A zine ( ; short for '' magazine'' or '' fanzine'') is a small-circulation self-published Self-publishing is the publication of media by its author at their own cost, without the involvement of a publisher. The term usually refers to writ ...

documenting the then-current

punk subculture The punk subculture includes a diverse and widely known array of ideologies, fashion, and other forms of expression, visual art, dance, literature, and film. Largely characterised by anti-establishment views, the promotion of individual freedom ...

. In 1980, he began publication of RE/Search, a tabloid format zine focusing on various counterculture and underground topics, with financial help from

Geoff Travis Geoff Travis (born 2 February 1952) is the founder of both Rough Trade Records and the Rough Trade chain of record shops. A former drama teacher and owner of a punk record shop, Travis founded the Rough Trade label in 1978. Biography Travis wa ...

Rough Trade Records Rough Trade Records is an independent record label based in London, England. It was formed in 1976 by Geoff Travis who had opened a record store off Ladbroke Grove. Having successfully promoted and sold records by punk rock and early post-pun ...

and actress/film director

Betty Thomas Betty Thomas (born Betty Lucille Nienhauser; July 21, 1948) is an American actress, director, and producer. She is known for her Emmy Award-winning role as Sergeant Lucy Bates on the television series ''Hill Street Blues''. As of March 2018, Tho ...

. At the same time he also started his own

typesetting Typesetting is the composition of text by means of arranging physical ''type'' (or ''sort'') in mechanical systems or ''glyphs'' in digital systems representing ''characters'' (letters and other symbols).Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random Ho ...

business, allowing for a day job to fund his publishing exploits and guaranteeing high quality typography and design for his magazines and books. Publishers V

The 1980s saw the expansion of RE/Search books from tabloid-formatted zines to academically-modeled books. Vale published and contributed to many books on the subjects of pranks, obscure music and films,

industrial culture Industrial music is a genre of music that draws on harsh, mechanical, transgressive or provocative sounds and themes. AllMusic defines industrial music as the "most abrasive and aggressive fusion of rock music, rock and electronic music" that w ...

, authors

J. G. Ballard James Graham Ballard (15 November 193019 April 2009) was an English novelist, short story writer, satirist, and essayist known for provocative works of fiction which explored the relations between human psychology, technology, sex, and mass medi ...

and

William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...

modern primitive Modern primitives or urban primitives are people in developed, or modern nations who engage in body modification rituals and practices inspired by the ceremonies, rites of passage, or bodily ornamentation in what they consider traditional cultu ...

s, and many other underground topics. In 1991, Vale sold his typography business to focus on publishing full-time. Vale, influenced by and well read in

cultural anthropology Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The portma ...

, describes his focus for writing: (I have) "this weird theory that there's only 1000 interesting people on this planet that I refer to as primary source thinkers. It's my job to find them. I'm just after something that lasts longer, not 'high sugar fluff' as

Henry Rollins Henry Lawrence Garfield (born February 13, 1961), known professionally as Henry Rollins, is an American singer, writer, spoken word artist, actor, and presenter. After performing in the short-lived hardcore punk band State of Alert in 1980, Rolli ...

put it. I want something I don't get right away. One of my favorite phrases, and I heard this from

William Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultu ...

, is 'belief is the enemy of knowledge'." Along with writing and distributing, Vale tours nationally giving talks about his career and provides guidance to DIY and Indie artists about book publishing. In 2012,

interviewed Vale at LA ZineFest.

As of 2017, both artist and musician

Florian-Ayala Fauna Florian-Ayala Fauna is an American artist, musician, poet, and music producer. Fauna is the main member of the post-industrial music project uncertain. Personal life Florian-Ayala Fauna was born in Norfolk, Virginia. At age 5, Fauna moved to ...

and science fiction author

Bruce Sterling Michael Bruce Sterling (born April 14, 1954) is an American science fiction author known for his novels and short fiction and editorship of the ''Mirrorshades'' anthology. In particular, he is linked to the cyberpunk subgenre. Sterling's first ...

are sponsors for V. Vale's RE/Search

newsletter A newsletter is a printed or electronic report containing news concerning the activities of a business or an organization that is sent to its members, customers, employees or other subscribers. Newsletters generally contain one main topic of int ...

Recordings

During the

coronavirus pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified ...

, Vale began to record songs with his wife, Marian Wallace. He played the Yamaha spinet piano. Wallace sang and produced the songs. This resulted in a 12-track digital album, ''Lockdown Lullabies'', was released in 2020. The album production was covered by the ''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...

.''

Media

* Vale is featured in the

2016 File:2016 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Bombed-out buildings in Ankara following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt; the impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff; Damaged houses during the 2016 Nagorno-Karabakh ...

nerd culture documentary ''

Traceroute In computing, traceroute and tracert are computer network diagnostic commands for displaying possible routes (paths) and measuring transit delays of packets across an Internet Protocol (IP) network. The history of the route is recorded as th ...

'' by

Johannes Grenzfurthner Johannes Grenzfurthner (; born 1975 in Vienna) is an Austrian artist, filmmaker, writer, actor, curator, theatre director, performer and lecturer. Grenzfurthner is the founder, conceiver and artistic director of ''monochrom'', an international art ...

, a frequent collaborator of RE/Search. * Vale is one of the interview subjects in ''William S. Burroughs: A Man Within.''

References

External links

RE/Search Publications

V. Vale interviewed on the R.U. Sirius Show on 2/7/2006

V. Vale interviewed on the R.U. Sirius Show on 11/12/05
{{DEFAULTSORT:Vale, V. 1944 births American writers of Japanese descent Japanese-American internees Blue Cheer members Living people UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni People from Drew County, Arkansas Writers from Arkansas Writers from San Francisco 20th-century American writers 21st-century American writers Underground culture Punk writers