Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1433345
Winter 2022 – LOCAL695.ORG 23 While I was in high school, Al Kooper placed a horn section at the forefront of his band, Blood, Sweat & Tears. Other horn bands followed, creating a need for trombone players. In college, a band named Straight that had plans to record an album in California asked me to play trombone and some- times drive their bus. When the band days ended, I happened to be on a whale- watch cruise off Dana Point, wearing a T-shirt from Sound 80, a popular Minneapolis recording studio. The logo caught the eye of a recording engineering student at Golden West College. We chatted and a couple of months later, I enrolled and attended as a part-time student. When school ended, after three months of job searching, I happened to spot an ad in the Los Angeles Times for an entry- level position in the KTLA engineering department. John DeMuth was the chief engineer at KTLA. He was a tele- vision pioneer and genius. I walked into his office, a modest, cluttered room piled high with manuals and equipment in various stages of disassembly. John moved a pile of papers from the chair near his desk. I sat down and handed him my résumé, which made its way to one of the piles of papers without ever crossing his field of vision. He looked around on his desk for a moment and picked up a small electronic part. John: "Do you know what this is?" Me: "Yes, it's a 22K quarter-watt resistor." John: "Can you start today?" And I knew at that moment that the interview was over. I started working in television. My first two years at that iconic station were spent as a clerk working for John and the rest of the talented staff in the amazing engineering maintenance department. I'm sure I learned more than I realized at the time and was fascinated by the abilities of the maintenance engineers and the crews that worked on the wide variety of shows that were taping on that historic lot. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd be asked to join them, and yet somehow with a résumé consist- ing of, "I can lift heavy things and drive a forklift," I gradu- ated to the position of schlepper. The differences between clerk and schlepper were substantial. The clerk job was more clerical (duh), no hands on the gear. The schlepper position had major benefits. First and foremost, it was a union job. I became a member of Local 695! I could now be asked to work on shows in addition to setting up gear and moving equip- ment from stage to stage (forklift). That first year as a schlepper, when I checked the work sched- ule for the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, I was surprised to find myself on the list to work the Rose Parade. Since I was new, and at the bottom of the seniority list, I hadn't done many shows and none away from the studio. For many of the engineering staff, the Rose Parade wasn't great duty. The weather was occasionally uncooperative, and the hours, especially the extremely early call on parade morning, weren't big selling points. I was elated. My first Rose Parade. It was 1982! That year, we used the Sun Television Truck. The Above: John DeMuth, KTLA Chief Engineer, at his retirement party. Top left: At retirement party. DeMuth, third from left. Bottom left: At retirement party. Brian Weisbrod, Engineering Clerk; John Cook, Engineer; Craig Debban, Engineer; Ric Teller, Engineering Clerk; Bob Henke, Engineer; Bob Spears, Engineer; Dick Browning, Engineer. Cook, Debban, Spears, and Browning were longtime KTLA Engineers.